New Delhi: With no signs of an Interpol notice against Lalit Modi coming, India recently contacted the global police body and pressed its demand for an early notification of the Red warrant sought by the Enforcement Directorate against the former IPL Chairman in connection with its money laundering case.
Official sources said on Wednesday a meeting in this regard was recently held with a joint team of the ED, CBI and Ministry of External Affairs talking to the Interpol via a video conferencing facility from here.
They said the Interpol, which has raised a number of queries for notifying a Red Corner Notice (RCN) against Modi, was briefed about the ED FIR filed in the case, the proceedings made in this regard in a special Mumbai court and the need for an urgent action on their part.
Sources said the Interpol, at the conclusion of the meeting, assured the investigators that they would cooperate. The ED, it is understood, also told them about the status of the predicate offence registered in this case by the Chennai police.
The Enforcement Directorate(ED) had registered a money laundering case against Modi and others based on this Chennai police complaint in 2012.
The ED headquarters, sometime back, had also written to Tamil Nadu police to expedite action in the FIR and brief it about its current status.
With no help coming on this front, the ED recently got a court's nod to begin extradition proceedings against Modi, whom it suspects to be based in the United Kingdom.
The extradition request was granted by a special court in Mumbai sometime back and it had earlier issued a non-bailable warrant against Modi in the same case on the basis of which the ED wanted an Interpol RCN issued last year.
Modi has been denying any wrong doing as alleged by the ED which claimed that he cheated BCCI-IPL in granting overseas telecast rights of the cricket tournament in 2009.
The ED has been wanting Modi to "join investigations" in a case relating to T-20 cricket Indian Premier League (IPL) competition after an FIR was registered against him and others under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
In August last year, the agency had moved the Interpol to get an RCN issued against Modi but the international police body has not obliged it yet in this regard.
Interpol authorities, time and again, have sought additional information from ED investigators on their money laundering case against Modi as part of getting satisfactory grounds before finally processing the world-wide warrant against him.
The ED is probing Modi, the IPL and its executives for alleged violation of anti-money laundering laws after registering a criminal FIR in 2012.
The FIR was filed after the central agency took cognisance of a cheating complaint filed by former BCCI chief N Srinivasan against Modi and half-a-dozen others with the Chennai police.
The ED subsequently invoked PMLA along with sections 420 (cheating) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC to probe if BCCI-IPL and the exchequer had been cheated in the award of telecast rights for the T-20 tournament in 2009.
