CBI arrests Karti Chidambaram’s close aide in bribery and corruption case 

The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested Congress leader Karti Chidambaram’s close associate Bhaskaranaman in connection with a bribery and corruption. Bhaskaranaman was placed under arrest last night after searches in Chennai.  

The central agency conducted searches at around 10 locations including Karti Chidambaram’s residence, Chennai, Mumbai, Koppal (Karnataka), Jharsuguda (Odisha), Mansa (Punjab) and Delhi. Chidambaram’s official residence—80 Lodhi Estate—was raided for nearly 5 hours from 10 am to around 3pm.  

These searches were conducted in connection with a fresh case registered by the agency over alleged foreign remittances between 2010 to 2014. Karti Chidambaram was allegedly involved in facilitating visas to Chinese workers for a conglomerate in exchange of bribes.  

The central agency had got documents indicating inward and outward transactions linked to Karti Chidambaram. Preliminary probe also revealed this was bribe was facilitating projects for Talwandi Sabo Power Limited, based in Punjab's Mansa.  

The CBI said in its statement that the private company responsbile for the project was running behind schedule and in order to avoid penalties, tried to get in more and more Chinese persons and professionals and needed visas for the same over and above what’s been permitted by the Home Ministry.  

It further claimed that the company devised a backdoor way to bypass the ceiling as it granted 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 regarding the same, which was granted within a month.  

The statement added, “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.” 

The agency got the whiff of this irregularity during INX probe against Chidambaram wherein the CBI recovered documents which showed inward and outward transactions related to Karti Chidambaram. He is already under probe in getting Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance for the INX Media and Aircel Maxis case.  

(With inputs from Munish Pandey)

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

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