CBI to grill Karti Chidambaram in Chinese visa scam case today

The Central Bureau of Investigation CBI has summoned Karti Chidambaram to join the probe in connection with a fresh case lodged against him and others for allegedly helping Chinese nationals getting visas by flouting rulesKarti has been summoned to appear on Wednesday by 11 am at our New Delhibased headquarters said a CBI sourceKartis Charted Accountant S Bhaskararaman is currently on custodial remand of the CBI and there are possibilities that Karti might be confronted with him The CBI has recovered 65000 emails in the matter which will be used as evidences Similarly a sales deed recovered during raids is also considered crucial in the case The deed is of a property bought in Jor Bagh and its power of attorney is in the name of Bhaskararaman whereas the property was bought by Karti and his motherAccording to the FIR 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 which would help the firm in completing a project before the deadlineThe private firm was in the process of establishing a 1980 MW thermal power plant the work for which 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 professionals to its site for which it needed project visas over and above the ceiling imposed by the Ministry of Home Affairs said a CBI officialThe official said that for the said purpose the representative of the private company approached a person based in Chennai through his close associate and thereafter they devised a backdoor strategy to defeat the purpose of visa ceiling by granting permission to reuse 263 project visas allotted to the said Chinese companyIn pursuance of the same the private company submitted a letter to the 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 the private person in Chennai through his close associate which was paid by the Mansabased private firm The payment of said bribe was routed from the private firm to the person in Chennai and his close associate through a Mumbaibased company as payment of false invoice raised for Consultancy and out of pocket expenses for Chinese visas related works The Mumbaibased company was never in any kind of work relating to visas rather it was in an entirely different business of industrial knives added the officialIt has been alleged that senior Chidambaram helped Chinese in getting visas by flouting rulesThis 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