Now, Nimbus takes Lokuge to courts
The setbacks faced by Sports and Public Recreation Minister Gamini Lokuge seems to be growing by the day and the latest drawback to hit him is that the television company with whom he entered into a contract for the sale of cricket rights has filed for arbitration in Singapore.
After removing the Arjuna Ranatunga headed cricket Interim Committee from office in December 2008, the Minister refrained from appointing a fresh committee or call for elections but carried on the activities of Sri Lanka Cricket through his secretary S. Liyanagama.
During that time he entered into a highly controversial television deal with Nimbus Pvt. Ltd. without the knowledge of the Marketing and Legal Departments of SLC for the five-match ODI series against India in January this year.
Nimbus is a blacklisted company by the SLC as they had on previous occasions too delayed payments and, more importantly, had won a previous court case in Singapore that cost SLC millions of rupees both as compensation and lawyer fees.
For the recent series against India, Nimbus were to pay the agreement money in three installments, but has still not paid the third installment that runs into a massive 2.6 million US $.
SLC was seeking legal advice on what course of action should be taken to get the due money back, but has now been ‘stumped’ with Nimbus taking them to courts in Singapore claiming that the telecast of the match coverage by a local television station was picked up by some television stations in India.