India’s former finance minister arrested on corruption charges in overnight raid (VIDEO)

Indian special forces have raided the house of former finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram to arrest him on charges of corruption and money laundering.

Shortly after Chidambaram returned home from a press conference at Congress Party headquarters, a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team scaled the wall of his Jor Bagh residence in New Delhi to detain the 73-year-old politician.

The dramatic scenes televised across Indian media showed CBI officers jumping over the locked gate to let the main force inside, while another team entered the house from the back door. The senior Congress leader, accused of clearing foreign investments in exchange for bribes when he was finance minister, was then driven away in a CBI vehicle amid spirited protests outside his house.

CBI and Enforcement Directorate (which investigates financial crimes) officers have been scouting Chidambaram's house since Tuesday, the day the politician went missing after the High Court rejected his plea seeking protection from arrest. Earlier, the Enforcement Directorate issued a lookout notice against him seeking his detention and effectively preventing the politician from fleeing abroad.

At the press conference, the former finance minister denied any wrongdoing and claimed that he was “not hiding from the law” but rather “seeking protection of the law.”

Chidambaram is accused of facilitating Foreign Investment Promotion Board clearance to the INX Media company in 2007 when he was the Finance Minister for Manmohan Singh’s government. Investigators allege that his son Karti received kickbacks after INX Media secured funds equivalent to roughly $41 million.

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