He further alleged that former ICC chief N Srinivasan had approached Modi in 2009 under express orders from Chidambaram to stop the International Management Group (IMG) from moving the ATP tennis tournament from Chennai to Malaysia.

I got in touch with IMG and I told them that Chidambaram’s son Karti runs the tournament and it’ll be unwise to upset the Finance Minister. But they told me that they were getting offered Rs 18 Crore from Malaysia and India is only willing to pay Rs 8 crore.

[...] and while it made sense for them to move the tournament since they will be losing $2.5 million in India, Srinivasan continued to pressure me to convince them and keep the tournament in Chennai.

Finally, I called up Andrew Wildblood (senior vice-president of IMG) and told him that he has to keep the tournament in India and incur the losses unless he doesn’t want to lose out on other business opportunities in India. He had no choice but to agree.

— Lalit Modi