The CBI registered a fresh case against Karti Chidambaram, son of senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram and four other accused on certain allegations, including bribery to facilitate issuance of visa to a Chinese company beyond ceiling limits. Searches were conducted at around ten locations on Tuesday morning in Delhi, Chennai , Koppal in Karnataka, Jharsuguda in Orissa, Mansa in Punjab. The fresh case names Karti, but does not name P Chidambaram.
The searches began after the CBI registered a case against five accused, including private persons based in Chennai and Mumbai, and private companies in Mumbai, Mansa in Punjab, besides unknown public servants and private persons. It has been alleged that the private company based at Mansa was in the process of establishing a 1980 MW thermal power plant at Mansa and the work was outsourced to a Chinese company. According to the CBI investigations so far, the project was running behind schedule, and in a bid to avoid penal action, the private company at Mansa tried to bring more Chinese nationals to their site for which they needed Project VISAs over and above the ceiling imposed by Ministry of Home Affairs.
The CBI alleged in its FIR that when the representative of the company approached a person at Chennai through his close associate, a modus operandi was devised to allow a back-door channel to defeat the purpose of ceiling by granting permission to re-use 263 Project VISAs allotted to the Chinese officials.
For this purpose, the representative of the company allegedly submitted a letter to the Union home ministry seeking approval to re-use the Project VISAs, which was approved within a month and permission was issued to the company. A bribe of Rs. 50 Lakh allegedly exchanged hands in the process. Besides Karti, the CBI FIR names his close associate S.Bhaskararaman based at Chennai; Vikas Makharia, representing the Mansa based private company; Talwandi Sabo Power Limited in Mansa; Bell Tools Limited in Mumbai and other unknown public servants and private persons. The CBI further alleged that the bribe money was routed through a Mumbai based company on a false invoice for consultancy. Further investigation is going on to unravel the larger conspiracy, said the CBI officials.
Meanwhile, P Chidambaram tweeted ,''This morning, a CBI team searched my residence at Chennai and my official residence at Delhi. The team showed me an FIR in which I was not named as an accused. The search team found nothing and seized nothing. I may point out that the timing of the search is interesting.'' His son Karti has tweeted earlier, “I have lost count. how many times has it been. Must be a record.''
