London, December 17
Foreign companies are planning legal action against organisers of the New Delhi Commonwealth Games, claiming they are still owed millions for their work on the opening and closing ceremonies and are being blocked from taking their equipment out of India.The complaints by the international firms and contractors follow allegations of corruption and mismanagement that plagued the games and cast further doubt on India's ambitions of bidding for the Olympics. Ric Birch, the executive producer of the Delhi ceremonies, said about 15 companies were affected.

"We did the job for the sake of the Commonwealth Games and for the sake of India," the Australian-born Birch told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "We all had government contracts and fully expected that those contracts would be honoured. I thought we could trust them. As things have turned out, we can't. They haven't returned calls, haven't paid their bills, haven't answered e-mails. They haven’t done anything," said Birch, who directed ceremonies at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles (1984), Barcelona (1992) and Sydney (2000), and the 2006 Turin Winter Games.

Birch said his company, Spectack, is still owed the final 15 per cent of his New Delhi contract, or "hundreds of thousands" of dollars, that was due on Oct. 31. The total amount at stake among the 15 companies is "several million dollars in fees and tens of millions in the value of the equipment that is just sitting there," Birch said.

Repeated attempts were made by the AP to reach top CWG OC officials. Calls were not answered and messages were not returned. Hardest hit are some of the companies that brought in lighting, audio, projection, communication and other equipment, including firms from Australia, Britain, Italy, Sweden and Germany.

According to documents seen by the AP, the companies have been unable to re-export their material which remains stored in freight containers. "There's literally millions of dollars worth of gear which is still stuck in containers in India," Birch said. "No one's doing anything and it just sits there. It's absolutely standard practice that the gear is brought in without duty and goes straight out afterwards.” One of the worst affected is Howard & Sons Pyrotechnics, an Australian company which handled the fireworks displays. According to a letter sent on Tuesday by Howard & Sons to Gurjot Kaur, chief vigilance officer of the OC, the company is still owed $287,000 and its equipment is being held in 18 air freight containers. — AP