ED raids Karthi Chidambaram's offices in Chennai

Chennai, Dec 16: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) carried out raids at the office of Karthi Chidambaram, son of former union minister, P Chidambaram.

The raids that were carried out were at the offices of Karthi situated in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

The ED had indicated after conducting the last raid earlier this month that they would be scrutinising documents at his Chennai office soon.

The ED is probing the alleged financial transaction between the company owned by Karthi and Aircel. The deal was allegedly made just before the company was given an approval from the foreign investment promotion board.

The ED is seeking to know why the company owned by Karthi was allotted shares at a lower rate than the book value.

It had been alleged that the company controlled by Karthi had benefited by earning huge profits during the sale of Aircel.

It was alleged that Karthi, benefited from Chidambaram's position as Finance Minister to earn huge profits during the sale of Aircel which Chidambaram sanctioned in 2006.

Senior BJP leader, Subramanian Swamy had alleged that the in 2005 Aircel was on the verge of bankruptcy.

The owner of the company Sivasankaran was approached by Maxis which wanted to pick up a 74% stake in Aircel for nearly Rs 4,000 crores.

The Enforcement Directorate is also probing if there were any financial dealings between the companies owned by Karthi Chidambaram and V Dwarakanathan who is a stake holder in the Vasan Health Care Private Ltd. The ED had sought to know from Dwarakanathan about some of the transactions he had made with the companies that were owned by Karthi.

The ED is also probing some transactions of Vasan Health Care Pvt Ltd which is a conglomerate owning 175 hospitals in India, Colombo and Dubai.

The ED seeks to know about the sale of 1.5 lakh shares to the Advantage Strategic Consulting Private Limited in October 2008. An official with the ED informed OneIndia that they are trying to find out if Karthi has a stake in any of these firms.

This probe comes in the wake of another probe by the ED.

The ED is trying to ascertain if Karthi Chidambaram had a role in these transactions and if he is linked with VHPCL.

The ED says that it is probing the case under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act of 2002.

The ED sought information from Dwarakanathan on the IT returns he has filed from 2004 to 2011, the details of assets, bank accounts and transactions he has done with the companies in which Karthi has a stake.

The allegation is that VHPCL which was incorporated in the year 2007 with Dr Arun and his wife, Meera as the first shareholders.

It was also alleged that three lakh shares were given to Dwarakanathan. However, the allegation was that Dwarakanathan transferred 1.5 lakh shares to a company known as Advantage Strategic Consulting Private Ltd, two third of which is owned by Ausbridge Holdings and Investments Private Ltd alleged to be held by Karthi.

OneIndia News