ICC confirms acting on Modi's corruption lead

The ICC has confirmed receiving from Lalit Modi a letter that claimed that three top and regular IPL players received illegal payments - in cash and in kind - from an Indian business house. The former IPL chairman made the allegation in June 2013. The ICC has said it passed on the letter, as per procedure, to the ACSU, which in turn forwarded it to the BCCI's anti-corruption unit. It was not clear whether the investigation had been completed, and whether the said players had been cleared of the charges.

Curiously, this letter was not revealed by Modi, who has been on a contentious-document-sharing spree on Twitter ever since top politicians in the country came under fire for helping him out with travel documents. Instead, this was a tweet sent to Modi by a user with the handle @shyamswami158. This was also the first tweet from the account, posting an image of the letter and asking the question, "Whadya hav to say about this @LalitKModi ? Wat was @ICC response ..... This is shocking!!!!" Modi's response to the tweet from @shyamswami158 was: "Ask @Icc @Bcci @Ipl why ask me. This is highly confidential. You should not be tweeting this".

The account @shyamswami158 does not exist any more, but the ICC has removed any doubts around the authenticity of the letter. "The ICC confirms that Mr Modi's confidential e-mail, which was received in June 2013, and which has recently been published on Twitter, was provided to the ACSU at the time," an ICC spokesperson told ESPNcricinfo. "The ACSU handled that information in accordance with its standard operating procedures, which included sharing it with the BCCI's anti-corruption unit."

It is understood that in the e-mail sent to the BCCI's anti-corruption unit, the ICC ACSU chief YP Singh told Ravi Sawani that the investigations would be carried out by the ICC ACSU because the three players were internationals.

In the said letter, addressed to ICC CEO Dave Richardson, Modi claimed he had barred the said businessman from bidding for IPL teams because he was a "big punter and also book maker". Modi accused one of the players had been given flats in Delhi's Vasant Vihar and Noida, another a sea-facing apartment in Mumbai's Bandra, and the third was paid in cash. The illegal payments, Modi alleged, were worth Rs 20 crores each.