Visa scam case: Karti Chidambaram to appear before CBI on Thursday

Karti Chidambaram will on Thursday record his statements before a team of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with Chinese visa scam case, an official said on Wednesday.

He has been accused along with others for allegedly helping Chinese nationals getting visas by flouting rules.

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Karti Chidambaram had to appear before the CBI on Wednesday by 11 a.m. but he did not join the probe. He told the journalists that he was going to barber shop for a haircut. Now, the CBI has again summoned him to join the investigation. S. Bhaskararaman, his Charted Accountant, is currently in custodial remand of the CBI. Karti will be confronted with him. The CBI had told the court hat they wanted to confront him with Karti and other accused.

The CBI has also recovered 65,000 emails in the matter which will be used as evidence.

A sales deed was recovered during the raids is very important. This sales deed is of a property bought in Jor Bagh and the power of attorney is in the name of Bhaskararaman whereas the property was bought by Karti and his mother.

Karti Chidambaram will be questioned in this connection.

According to the FIR, a Mansa (Punjab) based privite firm, Talwandi Sabo Power Limited, took help of a middleman and allegedly paid Rs 50 lakh to get the Visa issued for Chinse nationls which would help it in completing a project before the deadline.

"The Mansa (Punjab) based private firm was in the process of establishing a 1,980 MW thermal power plant and establishing of plant was outsourced to a Chinese company. The project was running behind its schedule. In order to avoid penal actions for the delay, the said private company was trying to bring more and more Chinese persons, professionals for their site at district Mansa (Punjab) and needed Project VISAs over and above the ceiling imposed by Ministry of Home Affairs," said the CBI official.

The official said that for the said purpose, the representative of the said private company approached a person based at Chennai through his close associate and thereafter they devised a back-door way to defeat the purpose of ceiling (maximum of Project VISAs permissible to the company's plant) by granting permission to re-use 263 Project VISAs allotted to the said Chinese company's officials.

In pursuance of the same, the said representative of Mansa based private company submitted a letter to Ministry of Home Affairs seeking approval to re-use the Project VISAs allotted to this company, which was approved within a month and permission was issued to the company.

"A bribe of Rs 50 lakh was allegedly demanded by said private person based at Chennai through his close associate which was paid by the said Mansa based private company. The payment of said bribe was routed from Mansa based private company to said private person of Chennai and his close associate 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," said the CBI official.

It has been alleged that Karti's father -- senior Congress leader and former Union Minister P. Chidambaram allegedly helped the Chinese getting visas by flouting rules.

The CBI officials said that they were looking into the matter.

--IANS

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