CBI issues statement on Karti Chidambaram’s ‘illegal visas’ case

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raided Karti Chidambaram’s official residence – 80 Lodhi Estate – for nearly five hours on Tuesday. The team reached the residence around 10am and left around 3pm. The raids were conducted at Karti Chidambaram’s residence in connection with facilitating visas for around 250 Chinese nationals for illegal gratification of Rs 50 lakh, when his father P Chidambaram was the home minister. 

The CBI team conducted searches at around 10 places including Chennai, Mumbai, Koppal (Karnataka), Jharsuguda (Orissa), Mansa (Punjab) and Delhi. 

"I have lost count, how many times has it been? Must be a record," Karti tweeted. 

P Chidambaram too tweeted: “This morning, a CBI team searched my residence at Chennai and my official residence at Delhi. The team showed me a FIR in which I am 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.”

This case is an offshoot of an ongoing investigation. 

The CBI stated that a case has been registered against five accused including “private persons based at Chennai, Mumbai, private companies based at Mumbai, Mansa (Punjab) etc. and unknown public servants & private persons”. 

The current case pertains to a private company based in Mansa that’s in the process of establishing a thermal power plant in Mansa, the contract for which was outsourced to a Chinese company. The project was running behind schedule and in order to avoid being penalised, the private company of Mansa tried to get in more and more Chinese persons and professionals. However, it required visas for the said purpose over and above what’s been permitted by the Home Ministry. 

The company devised a back-door way to defeat the purpose of ceiling by granting permission to reuse 263 project visas allotted to the Chinese company’s officials. The representative of the company submitted a letter to the Home Ministry for approval to reuse the project visas allotted to the company. The CBI stated that permission was granted within a month. 

“A bribe of Rs 50 lakh was allegedly demanded by said private person based at Chennai through his close associate/front man which was paid by the said Mansa based private company,” said CBI.

“It has been further alleged that the payment of said bribe was routed from Mansa based private company to said private person of Chennai and his close associate/front man through a Mumbai based company as payment of false invoice raised for consultancy and out of pocket expenses for Chinese visas related works whereas the private company based at Mumbai was never in any kind of work relating to visas rather it was in an entirely different business of industrial knives,” it added.

The CBI got the whiff of the case during an ongoing investigation against Karti who is already under probe in getting Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance for the INX media and Aircel Maxis case, they said.

Also read: CBI conducts searches Karti Chidambaram’s residence, 7 other premises