INX Media case: Met P Chidambaram to seek approval for foreign proposals worth Rs 300 crore, says Indrani Mukerjea

New Delhi: Indrani Mukerjea, who once owned the television company INX, which is at the core of the CBI case against Karti Chidambaram, has told the Enforcement Directorate that she and husband Peter Mukerjea had met former Union Minister P Chidambaram to seek government approval for foreign investment proposals worth around Rs. 300 crore, reports NDTV.

Mukerjea’s statement, also made separately to the CBI and recorded before a magistrate, has linked the former Union Finance Minister to the CBI case filed against Karti Chidambaram, 46. Karti, who was arrested on Wednesday morning, is accused of receiving kickbacks in 2007 to clear the foreign investment, using the influence of his father, who was then the Union finance minister. At the time, the company was owned by Peter and Indrani Mukerjea. The couple are currently in jail on charges of murdering her daughter Sheena Bora.

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Indrani and Peter had even met P Chidambaram in his office in the North Block. They allege he had asked them to help the business of Karti and to “make foreign remittances” for this purpose. Subsequently, they met Karti at Delhi’s Hyatt hotel, where he allegedly demanded a payment of 1 million dollars. “It was further admitted that Karti suggested the names of Chess Management and Advantage Strategic as alternatives for making the payments,” a document accessed by NDTV states.

Chidambaram’s lawyer Manu Singhvi, however, claims Karti was not a director or a shareholder of Advantage Strategic company, one of the companies through which the Mukerjeas had allegedly paid the bribe. P Chidambaram is on his way back from London and will arrive on Wednesday night. The former finance minister cancelled his Oxford lecture after the CBI arrested Karti from Chennai airport on his arrival from London. The CBI has got one-day custody of Karti. The CBI had filed a case against Karti last year, in which he had been accused of accepting bribes to the tune of 10 lakh.