CWG: Budget misquoted to favour Swiss Timing

New Delhi: Two top officials in the CWG Organising Committee (OC) misquoted the budget for Timing Scoring and Results (TSR) system and ignored lower bid by another firm to award the contract to the Swiss firm Omega, the CBI has been informed.

Bharat Prasad, who joined OC in July 2008 as Deputy Director General (Finance) and has been named by CBI as a witness in the TSR scam case, in his statement has explained how the funds were misappropriated by V K Verma and Lalit Bhanot causing huge loss to the exchequer.

The total budget sanctioned for TSR was Rs 92.30 crore only of which Rs 7 crore was meant for purchase of legacy items like camera's and swimming equipments to be retained by venue owners, the 62-year-old Prasad said.

However, former Director General of OC, VK Verma told the Executive Board that the budget for TSR was Rs 109.23 crore and the Rs 7 crore was not utilised for the purpose it was meant for.

"The total budget for TSR was Rs 92.30 crore only. It was seen from the minutes of meeting that DG while informing the OC Executive Board about the details of the processing of the commercial and sponsorship bids of Swiss Timing has indicated the budget for TSR to be Rs 109.23 crore which is false," Prasad said in his statement.

"Grant for TSR included Rs 7 crore for procurement of legacy items to be retained by venue owners. However, OC did not go for these purchases nor the grant of Rs 7 crore was returned," Prasad said.

Secretary General of the OC, Bhanot went ahead to execute the contract for TSR with Swiss Timing at Rs 115.33 crore ignoring other substantially lower bids that caused a huge losses to the public exchequer, he said.

"The bid price from Swiss Timing for TSR came out to be Rs 115.33 crore and for other Spanish firm MSL it was 90.15 crore. Moreover, MSL had offered Games Management Systems free in its bids.

"Further, the price quoted by MSL is inclusive of all taxes wheres the price quoted by the Swiss firm was exclusive of all taxes which include service tax at rate of 10.3 per cent and TDS at 20 per cent," he said.