FILE photo: Former Union minister Dayanidhi Maran
Former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran has said that assets belonging to his family - including a fixed deposit worth Rs 100 crore - have been illegally taken by authorities who have accused him of money-laundering nearly Rs 750 crore or 120 million dollars that was allegedly paid to him as a bribe while he was Telecom Minister for engineering the sale of telecom Aircel to Malaysia-based group Maxis.
Mr Maran said many of the properties and bank accounts that have been seized by the Enforcement Directorate are based on his earnings before the Aircel deal took place in 2007. "This was even before the alleged crime," he said to reporters on Thursday night. "The fixed deposits they've frozen are my own earnings."
Mr Maran, 48, attributes the case and action against him to "political vendetta". Maxis and the Marans have denied any wrongdoing.
In 2011, the CBI began investigating allegations that while in office, Mr Maran denied clearances and crucial licences to C Sivasankaran, the owner of Aircel, till the entrepreneur caved to pressure to sell his firm to Maxis, owned by T Ananda Krishnan, the second-richest man in Malaysia. In a criminal case being heard in a Delhi court, the CBI has said that in return, Mr Maran and his brother Kalanithi received "illegal gratification" worth Rs 750 crore in companies owned by them as part of the Sun Group, a conglomerate of media firms owned by Kalanithi Maran, who is 50.
Dayanidhi Maran is also charged in another criminal case with illegally setting up what amounted to an entire telephone exchange at his Chennai home, with the government paying for lines that transferred vast data at no cost for the Sun Group.
This home, a large mansion in Chennai's famous Boat Club neighbourhood, is among the properties taken over by officials this week.