Mumbai, April 17: Income-tax officials have not been able to locate several “vital” documents that could help trace the source of money that is being pumped by the franchisees into the Indian Premier League despite raiding several of its offices. Officials have now asked IPL commissioner Lalit Modi to produce the documents and be present before them on Monday for further questioning.

I-T officials have, in the meantime, submitted an interim report on their findings to the finance ministry.
According to sources, Mr Modi’s explanation is being sought as the few documents that the department has laid its hands on do not tally with the information provided by Mr Modi to the I-T department during his questioning on the first day. The “vital” documents that the department is seeking are a crucial set of documents that were suspected to have been removed by an insider at least half an hour before the I-T raid on Thursday.
“The I-T teams have been scrutinising copies of the documents they had brought from the IPL offices, but there are a few missing documents that could have helped to establish the   source of the finances. Mr Modi has been asked to be present for the next round of questioning on Monday, with the relevant documents,” a source said.
The source added that an interim report has been already submitted to the finance ministry on the findings so far. “A preliminary report has already been submitted and the ministry has been briefed about it. A detailed report shall be submitted after the inquiry is complete,” he said. The I-T department is also set to serve notices on all IPL franchises to submit details about their stakes in their respective teams.
“To have more clarity on the subject, the department will serve notices to the various consortia and individual owners of the teams to submit the documents establishing their stakes in the teams,” another official said. “A team of 20 officials has been set up to go through the transactions minutely and submit their report on the same. The basic intention is to check whether ill-gotten money stashed away in tax havens like Mauritius has made its way into the IPL,” he added.

Dippy Vankani