Former BCCI secretary Sanjay Patel today said in his defence that UK-based company ‘Page Protection Services’, hired by the previous dispensation, “did not snoop on any board official” during his time in office.
The BCCI has sent a letter to Patel asking him to clarify about the USD 900,000 payment made to the company for allegedly carrying out 24×7 surveillance on some of the key Board officials. This happened when N Srinivasan was calling the shots in BCCI.
“I had deactivated my BCCI email account, the very day after I relinquished office (last March). I have sought for the MoU from the BCCI since I don’t have any documents with me. Once they give me that, I will file my reply. But I am putting this on record, no such instruction was given to the company regarding snooping on individuals,” Patel told PTI today.
When asked as to what prompted BCCI to hire such a company, Patel replied: “I don’t think there was any work order given. There was a point of time when BCCI e-mail was hacked. In order to prevent important documents being leaked through twitter, we signed an MoU with this company.
“Everything was done after due diligence. It was done for the sake of security. We never ever told them to carry out surveillance on individuals.”
Patel said that there is a 50-page report that was filed by the company (Page Protection) on security awereness measures that BCCI needed to take.
“They had submitted a 50-page report where we were told about the possible protective measures we need to take in order to keep the important documents safely. Therefore, any allegations of snooping is not correct,” Patel said in his defence.