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New Delhi - The sacked former head of the Indian Premier League Lalit Modi said he is the victim of a "witch hunt" in his first major interview since being forced from office under a cloud of allegations.
Modi, the brash driving force behind the money-spinning IPL, was removed as the chairperson of the cricket tournament and other senior positions in the national game in September.
Last month, India's cricket body, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), lodged a complaint with police over the misappropriation of funds totalling 4.68 billion rupees ($106 million) during IPL events.
Police in the southern city of Chennai, where the BCCI is based, registered a case against Modi and six others "on charges including criminal conspiracy, cheating and falsification of accounts."
"What I did was absolutely by the book," Modi told former BBC sports journalist Mihir Bose in an interview posted on Modi's personal website and YouTube late Thursday.
Since the allegations surfaced Modi has been in London amid pressure from Indian authorities to return home to speak to investigators.
"Whatever is on is like a witch hunt," he said, adding he was cooperating fully with Indian authorities through teleconferences.
He said he had launched a "pioneering cricket initiative", adding that he had shared the same fate as other pioneers who ended up "with arrows in their backs."
"I can very clearly tell you that I have not pocketed any money from the IPL," he said.
Modi also denied rigging bidding for the lucrative franchises in the league, insisting it was an "open bid" and saying that he had hired the best legal minds to ensure the process was above board.
Responding to charges that he used the tournament as a personal fiefdom that benefited his associates, he said he got friends and relatives to bid for the teams because no-one else would.
"When I conceived the IPL, everyone thought it was a hare-brained scheme. none of the existing financiers for the game wanted to be part of the financing," he said.
"The only way we could take this forward was to bring in friends and family," he said. "Now it has become so successful people are pointing and saying, 'You gave it and to friends and family.'"
"Where we all these people when we were conceiving the league?"
