A top police officer told this paper on Wednesday, "We have reached a stage where we cannot avoid an inquiry. We will either summon Meiyappan to Mumbai or send a team to Chennai to question him."
The Times of India on Wednesday broke the story of the Mumbai police investigating Meiyappan, who's the 'team principal' (equivalent of chief executive) of CSK.
While it withheld Meiyappan's name on the grounds that the probe was yet to establish any complicity with bookies or involvement in the fixing scandal, it spoke of him as a "close relative of a powerful IPL franchise owner who wields enormous clout in the world of cricket"; later in the story, it hinted at Chennai being his "home ground". But within hours of the paper hitting the stands, both their names were out in the public domain and all over the electronic media.
Despite relentless references through the day to Meiyappan and his links with Vindu, he refused to issue a statement. Attempts to reach him through CSK, Srinivasan's flagship company India Cements and the Tamil Nadu cricket association proved futile.
Nor was there any reaction from Srinivasan, who has claimed right from the day Sreesanth and two other Rajasthan Royal players were arrested that it was a problem of a few rotten eggs.
The police on Wednesday repeated what it had told the TOI the day before: that investigations have revealed a series of back-to-back conversations where Vindu would call bookie Ramesh Vyas, who has since been arrested, immediately after talking to Meiyappan.
Even if no IPL team owner or CEO had knowledge of or involvement in spot/match fixing, the hint of any connection with bookies could have very serious consequences. A team owner/CEO is privy to information that bookies would pay big bucks for.
In the corporate world, it is a criminal offence for a CEO, board member or senior executive to profit from privileged information or to pass it on to outsiders who then profit from it, as Rajat Gupta discovered.
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