Eyeing Karti link, ED raids two companies

NEW DELHI/BENGALURU: Continuing with its probe into the finances and investments of former finance minister P Chidambaram’s son Karti, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday raided the Bengaluru premises of two venture capital firms, Sequoia Capital and WestBridge Capital, who have made investments in firms allegedly linked to Chidambaram Jr.
The two investment firms put money in Vasan Health Care which, along with Advantage Strategic, another company with alleged connections to Karti Chidambaram, is being probed in the Aircel-Maxis case.
Sources said the raids yielded crucial inputs, including electronic data, based on which the ED will soon call officials of both Vasan Health Care and Advantage Strategic for questioning.
In the meantime, officials of Sequoia Capital and WestBridge Capital are likely to be called for a session with ED officials, possibly as early as the weekend, as the inquiry into the Aircel-Maxis case and its offshoots gathers momentum.
In an interesting development, Sequoia Capital on Tuesday said it cut off relations with Vasan Health Care as soon as it got to know about the ED’s interest in the latter. The private equity firm said it had got its nominee on the board of Vasan, V T Bhardwaj, to quit.
Saying it took “prompt steps”, the firm added, “Bhardwaj, the managing director of Sequoia Capital India Advisors Pvt Ltd, who was Sequoia Capital India’s nominee on the Vasan Health Care board of directors, quit and demanded that management of Vasan conduct a thorough investigation into the allegations.”
Sequoia Capital further said, “During the course of this investigation, the Sequoia Capital India team has met ED officials multiple times and has answered every query placed before us. We adopted the same approach during the ED visit to our offices.”
It said Sequoia had no association with companies like Aircel or Maxis. “Our only connection to the ED visit is that Sequoia Capital India is a minority investor in Vasan, which is one out of the 100+ investments made in India over last 10 years,” it added.
On December last year, ED officials had searched the premises of Advantage Strategic and Vasan Health Care and the residences of their directors in Chennai in connection with the 2G case. This was followed by a search on the premises of Chess Global Advisory Services Pvt Ltd, a firm in which Karti was a director.
The search on Chess Global invited strong reactions from the former FM who claimed Karti was being victimized by the NDA government. He called the ED raids a “fishing and roving exercise”. Chidambaram had said, “As can be expected, nothing was found in the fishing and roving enquiry. I would like to see how far a foolish government will go in harassing him (Karti).”