Tharoor was paid Rs 13.5 lakh by CWG OC: report

New Delhi, Feb 13: There seems to be no end to the excesses committed by the Commonwealth Games Organising committee. This time, it is the turn of Shashi Tharoor, a former United Nations Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information and the former minister of state for external affairs.

According to a report by the Times of India, Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has revealed that the CWG OC paid $30,000 or Rs 13.5 lakh to Tharoor to utilise his services to influence national and international communities to help ascertain successful holding of the Games. And all this for attending the OC office for 12 days.

The report says that the audit has found that Tharoor attended OC discussions for four days each in the months of Sep'08 , Oct'08 and, Jan'09. The payments were received in a Dubai branch of HSBC in 2009.

The daily quotes the former minister's as responding, "My association with CWG as a consultant relates to a different phase of my life, when I was a private citizen with no relationship to the government. It seems the CWG was inefficient enough to make the payments late, but the activities paid for are for a period well before I entered public life."

And on why was the payment received in a Dubai account, the ex-minister is quoted by the Times of India as saying, "I legally retain my foreign bank accounts as all former NRIs are entitled to do under RBI rules, and there is no impropriety in doing so."

And stressing that he was not overpaid, Tharoor has been reported by the Times of India as saying, "I did not approach the CWG but they sought me out in order to have me lend my stature to the promotion of the event; the consultancy fee charged was a token sum, and the total sum paid ($30,000) was far below the fee that I used to command even just to make a single speech."

OneIndia News