CBI takes Karti Chidambaram to Mumbai for questioning in #INXMediaCase

Mumbai, March 4: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) today took Karti Chidambaram, son of former Finance Minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram to Mumbai for further investigation in the INX Media money laundering case.

Karti may be brought face-to-face with former media barons Peter and Indrani Mukerjea. In her statement to the Enforcement Directorate, Mukerjea had brought up the name of P Chidambaram.

She and her husband Peter Mukerjea told the Enforcement Directorate that they had met P Chidambaram in North Block when he was the finance minister, to seek government approval to foreign investment proposals worth around Rs 300 crore in their company, INX Media.

The couple alleged he had asked them to help his son's business and to make foreign remittances for this purpose.

Karti was arrested at Chennai airport when he returned from the United Kingdom. In November, the Supreme Court allowed Karti Chidambaram to go to the UK for his daughter's admission in the Cambridge University.

The CBI had filed an FIR in the matter on May 15 last year alleging irregularities in the FIPB clearance to INX Media for receiving overseas funds to the tune of Rs 305 crore in 2007 when Chidambaram was the Union finance minister. The CBI has also alleged that Karti had received funds to the tune of Rs 10 lakh in the case.

According to the CBI, INX Media clearly states in its records that Rs 10 lakh was given to Advantage Strategic Consulting (P) Limited, a firm indirectly owned by Karti, for management consultancy charged towards FIPB notification and clarification.

Besides the central probe agency, the Enforcement Directorate has also registered a money laundering case. The CBI is also probing the alleged irregularities in grant of the FIPB clearance to the Aircel-Maxis deal in 2006.