New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday June 24 apprised the Delhi High Court that the agency will not arrest Congress MP Karti Chidambaram till July 12, in connection with the alleged money laundering case linked to the allotment of the visas to Chinese nationals in 2011.
The development came after the bench of Justice Jasmeet Singh told the probe agency that the court will not be able to deal with the matter and slated it for July 12.
During the course of the hearing, the ED’s counsel informed the court that the central agency would not arrest Karti Chidambaram till the next hearing day.
Additional Solicitor General S.V. Raju, appeared on behalf of the probe agency.
Karti, son of senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, knocked the doors of the high court following the dismissal of his anticipatory bail plea by a lower court.
On June 3, the court of special CBI judge M.K. Nagpal had denied the anticipatory bail applications moved by Karti Chidambaram and other accused persons in the case, including the Congress MP’s chartered accountant, S. Bhaskar Raman, and Vikas Makharia, the associate vice-president of thermal power plant Talwandi Sabo Power.
In the last hearing, senior advocate Kapil Sibal had argued that the alleged transaction was from 2011 and the ED registered the case after the lapse of a long time, pointing out that there was no investigation in all these years.
The counsel also argued that the value of the alleged transaction was Rs 50 lakh, which was less than Rs 1 crore, and in view of this fact, he should be granted bail.
According to the FIR, the Mansa-based Talwandi Sabo Power Ltd took the help of a middleman and allegedly paid Rs 50 lakh to get visas issued for Chinese nationals to complete a project before the deadline.
“The payment of the said bribe was routed from the Mansa-based private company to a private person in Chennai and his close associate through a Mumbai-based company as payment of false invoice raised for consultancy and out of pocket expenses for Chinese visa related works,” the FIR read.
