Family emails suggest Lalit Modi owns ‘interest’ in 3 IPL teams: Report

New Delhi: Family emails purportedly linked to former Indian Premier League (IPL) czar Lalit Modi refers to his alleged “beneficial interest” in three franchises of the cash-rich league, according to a report published in The Indian Express.

The newspaper claimed that it had reviewed the emails whose trail begins on May 19, 2015, a month before Modi emails were first reported by the London-based The Sunday Times.

An Email dated May 19, 2015 was between Australia-based attorney Dean Kino to Lalit Modi and Samir Modi. According to an attachment with the email: “Both Lalit and (brother) Samir have agreed on their need to establish their own business operations free of restrictions imposed by the settler of the K K Family Trust (named after father K K Modi)” and it continues, “Accordingly, Lalit and Samir hereby agree as follows”.

Interestingly, point 5 of this “agreement,” dated May 18, 2015, says: “They will jointly own the beneficial interest currently owned by Lalit in three IPL teams, provided, however that in the event Lalit and Samir agree not to jointly own the Acquired K K Trust Assets and instead, they separately take and hold their share of the acquired KK Trust Assets, then as soon as Samir receives his share of the Acquired K K Trust Assets, his interest in the IPL teams will be transferred back to Lalit.”

However, when The Indian Express contracted Kino, he recognised the email and told the English daily: “With respect to the particular draft document that you have referred to, the reference to the potential cricket interests of Lalit were based on guess work rather than facts, hence the draft nature of the document and the fact that there were numerous other drafts that referred to other potential sporting interests rather than IPL interests, including CPL and BBL teams and English Pub Darts teams, none of which I understood were owned by Lalit. Indeed, the concept your refer to would be impossible under what I understand are the IPL rules. Based on that, I can confirm that the documents reflected initial discussions and thoughts and nothing was ever finalized.”