Indian-American in Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign

Washington, Sep 3 (UNI) Indian American businessman Sant S Chatwal helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Senator Hillary Clinton's campaigns, even as he battled governments on two continents to escape bankruptcy and millions of dollars in tax liens.

The Washington Post said the founder of the Bombay Palace restaurant chain, Mr Chatwal is one of a growing number of fundraisers in the 2008 Presidential campaign whose backgrounds have prompted questions about how much screening the candidates devote to their ''bundlers'' while they press to raise record amounts.

It said Mr Chatwal's case reached from his native India to New York City. The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) pursued him for approximately 4 million dollar in unpaid business taxes, while New York state placed a lien seeking more than 5 million dollar in taxes.

He forfeited a building to New York City on which he was elinquent on property taxes and was sued by federal regulators seeking to recoup millions of dollars in loans from a failed bank where he served as a director.

Across the ocean, three Indian banks forced him into US bankruptcy, and he was charged with bank fraud. He was out on bond when he showed up in India in 2001 during a visit by his longtime friend Bill Clinton.

Mr Chatwal recently said he plans to help raise 5 million dollar from Indian Americans for Ms Clinton's Presidential bid.

Asked whether anything in Mr Chatwal's background caused concerns about his activities on behalf of the campaign, the daily said Ms Clinton spokesman Phil Singer answered, 'No'. He declined last week to be more specific, saying only that major fundraisers were outinely vetted ''through publicly available records.'' While Mr Chatwal raised money for Hillary Clinton's Senate and Presidential campaigns and Bill Clinton's charitable efforts, he settled the regulatory and tax cases one by one, mostly by working out plans to pay portions of the debts. He resolved the last of them this spring.

''The man came to this country, accumulated an empire, lost it during the time of real estate (softness), and struggled and worked to try to pay off his debts,'' the daily quoted A Mitchell Greene, Chatwal's lawyer for 25 years. ''It has been a long battle, but he has cleared up all of his obligations, and in the process he is trying to accumulate his wealth again.'' UNI