Chinese visa scam: CBI is playing Test cricket with me, mocks Karti Chidambaram

Congress MP Karti P Chidambaram on May 28 appeared before the Central Bureau of Investigation CBI for the third straight day to record his statements in connection with Chinese Visa ScamWhile interacting with the media Karti Chidambaram said that he had written to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla against the CBI for seizing his confidential parliamentary papers and is awaiting his replyHe also took a dig at the investigation agency by likening his interrogation to a test cricket game and termed it a tactic of harassment and political vendettaOn Thursday the CBI grilled Karti son of former Finance Minister P Chidambaram for about six hours The following day again the questioning went on for about six hoursS Bhaskararaman his Chartered Accountant is currently in custodial remand of the CBI Karti will be confronted with him The CBI had told the court that it wants to confront both the accusedThe CBI has also recovered 65000 emails in the matter which will be used as evidenceAccording to sources a sales deed 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 motherKarti Chidambaram will be questioned in this connectionAccording to an FIR filed recently a Mansa Punjab based private firm Talwandi Sabo Power Limited took help of a middleman and allegedly paid Rs 50 lakh to get the Visa issued for Chinese nationals to help completion of the project before the deadlineThe Mansa Punjab based private firm was in the process of establishing a 1980 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 officialThe official said that for the purpose the representative of the said private company approached a person based at Chennai through his close associate and thereafter they devised a backdoor way to defeat the purpose of ceiling maximum of Project VISAs permissible to the companys plant by granting permission to reuse 263 Project VISAs allotted to the said Chinese companys officialsIn pursuance of the same the said representative of Mansa based private company submitted a letter to Ministry of Home Affairs seeking approval to reuse the Project VISAs allotted to this company which was approved within a month and permission was issued to the companyA 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 officialIt has been alleged that Kartis father P Chidambaram allegedly helped the Chinese getting visas by flouting rulesThe CBI officials said that they were looking into the matterThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever