BCCI to adopt wait and watch policy on Kochi team investor

The Cricket Board, yet to recover from the alleged scams of former Indian Premier League chairman Lalit Modi, has a new problem confronting it with news reports on Sunday saying tax evasion notice has been issued to one of the investors of its new Kochi franchise by the Central Government.

BCCI president Shashank Manohar said from Nagpur that the Board would not do anything, but wait and watch the progress of this controversial development, for the present.

"We have not been informed directly about this. He (Harshad Mehta) has been reportedly served notice for tax evasion, which is not a criminal offence. We will wait and watch," said Manohar, reacting to the development that has the potential to grow into another new headache for the Board.

According to the official website of Kochi IPL franchise  Kochi Cricket Pvt Ltd  Mehta is among its shareholders through Film Waves Combine, an investment firm.

"Film Waves Combine is an investment company of Mr Harshad Mehta, Senior Partner of Rosy Blue Group, which has a turnover of over 7500 crore and are world leaders in the jewellery industry," is the information given on the website.

The other investors as per website www.kochiteam.com, are: Anchor Earth, Parinee Developers, Rendezvous Sports World Pvt Ltd, Anand Shyam Estates and Vivek Venugopal.

In fact, after winning the bid for one of the two new IPL teams from BCCI, the investors were wrangling for a long time and, at one stage, looked like losing the IPL franchise before they buried the hatchet and got the BCCI's go-ahead.

At last month's players' auction, Kochi successfully bid for Team India swing bowler S Sreesanth and Sri Lanka spin legend Muthiah Muralitharan, among others.