Delhi Court Adjourns Till July 9 Hearing In INX Media Case Against P Chidambaram, Karti Chidambaram And Others

A Delhi Court has adjourned en bloc hearing in the INX Media Money Laundering case till July 9 in relation to the main chargesheet filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the INX Media money laundering case against Former Union Minister P Chidambaram, his son Karti P. Chidambaram and 8 others.

Special CBI Judge MK Nagpal had adjourned the matter in view of the directions issued by the Delhi High Court to take up only urgent cases through video conferencing mode and to that all the other pending routine/non-urgent matters are to be adjourned en-bloc.

The Court had issued summons to Former Union Minister P Chidambaram, his son Karti P. Chidambaram and 8 others for appearance to all the accused persons after taking cognizance of the ED's main chargesheet in the case.

The Court had earlier, while putting up for scrutiny of documents, exempted personal appearances of the accused persons in the case at the request of their counsels.

During the course of hearing on June 14, the Court had allowed ED's application for issuance of summons to both the accused companies based abroad, i.e. Advantage Starategic Consulting Singapore and Advantage Estrategia Esportiva, Spain and directed the IO to return back the original summons issues to the companies dated 7th April and 9th August 2021 by directing that in its place fresh summons in the names of said companies be issued for 27th September 2021.

Brief Facts of the Case 

CBI had registered an FIR dated 15th May 2017 against INX Media Pvt. Ltd., Karti Chidambaram and others for offences under sec. 120B read with sec. 420 of IPC along with sec. 8, 12(2) and 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. Since the offences find mention in the Schedule appeneded to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, a case was also registered by the Directorate of Enforcement (DoE), Ministry of Finance, Department of Revenue, Government of India on 18th May 2017 and an investigation was therefore taken up for a possible action under PMLA.

The said FIR was registered on the allegations that Indrani Muherjea and Pratim Mukherjea, Director and COO respectively of INX Media entered into a criminal conspiracy with Karti P Chidambaram and committed illegal acts in receiving excess Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) than the amount approved by Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB). Other allegation was that such unauthorized downstream investment by INX Media in INX News without the approval of FIPB, were got scuttled by Karti P. Chidambram by influencing the public servants of FIPB Unit, Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Ministry of Finance (MoF)

It was therefore alleged that owing to the criminal conspiracy and influence of P Chidambaram and Karti Chidambaram, such officials abused their official positions and caused undue favours to INX Media due to which INX Media had paid huge amounts to some companies which Karti P Chidambaram had substantial interest in, either directly or indirectly. The investigation revealed that for regularization of excess FDI and downstream investment by INX Media, proceeds of crime were generated on few occasions from criminal activities of the said case and the same were received by Karti P. Chidambram through some shell companies associated with him.

Furthermore, it was revealed that a fake invoice dated 26th June 2008 of Rs. 11,23,600 was raised in the name of ASCPL, a company beneficially owned by Karti Chidambaram, for providing consultancy services to INX Media. The investigation further revealed that four more fake invoices in the names of four other companies for amounts, totalling to approximately US $ 700,000 (equivalent to Rs.3.2 corers), in the month of September, 2008 were also raised on INX Media.