NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally attached assets worth Rs 32 crore belonging to three TV channels ahead of filing its chargesheet in the TRP manipulation case.
The properties, attached under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), are owned by Fakt Marathi, Box Cinema and Maha Movie and are in the form of land, commercial and residential units in Mumbai, Indore, Delhi and Gurugram, as well as in bank balance, the central agency said in a statement.
“Fakt Marathi, Box Cinema, and Maha Movie entered into a criminal conspiracy to cheat, and committed the offence of criminal breach of trust, forgery in order to gain wrongfully by manipulating TRPs of these television channels," the ED stated.
By “fraudulently enhancing” their TRP numbers, these channels succeeded in securing “enhanced advertisement revenue”, the agency claimed.
During its investigation into the alleged TRP scam, based on an FIR lodged by the Mumbai police, the ED said the aforementioned channels generated total proceeds amounting to Rs 46 crore from the “crime”.
Further, it was discovered that in return for kickbacks, Hansa Research Group's relationship managers had divulged confidential information to "unscrupulous elements" about households where TRP-measuring BARC bar-o-meters were installed.
The agency claimed that "in two of these channels, just five compromised households were contributing to approximately 25 per cent of the viewership of Mumbai for the relevant period and for the third channel, five compromised households were contributing to about 12 per cent of viewership of Mumbai."
The Mumbai police claimed to have unearthed a purported TRP manipulation racket in the city last year in October. At a press conference to brief the media about the alleged scam, it named three channels – Republic TV, Fakt Marathi and Box Cinema – for their involvement in the matter. The controversy sent shockwaves through the broadcast industry. Over the ensuing months, the case took many twists and turns: there have been number of high profile arrests, including former BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta; BARC has withheld weekly data for TV news channels and is conducting an internal probe; a committee under Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi S Vempati made recommendations to the MIB on the TV ratings ecosystem.
