The sudden departure of the elder Maran with his wife at this juncture has raised many eyebrows in Chennai.
Kalanidhi Maran, elder brother of former union textiles minister Dayanidhi Maran, against whom the Enforcement Directorate has filed a case, left Chennai on Sunday for Florence, Italy.
Kalanidhi, accompanied by his wife Kaveri and Vijaya Kumar, the managing director of Sun TV, left Chennai airport in a special private aircraft owned by the former. The sudden departure of the elder Maran with his wife at this juncture has raised many eyebrows in Chennai.
“It is not known whether they are on a short trip or for an extended holiday. The Marans have not taken their children along with them on Sunday. We are also in the dark whether the kids had already left the country,” said a senior Intelligence official. He said the Marans are frequent flyers abroad, especially to Singapore. “But the trip at this juncture is intriguing,” said the official.
Kalanidhi and Dayanidhi, owners of the Sun Network, the largest satellite TV network and the airline Spice jet, are enmeshed in the 2G Spectrum scam following which the younger Maran lost his job as union cabinet minister. It was alleged that the brothers pressurized Sivasankaran, owner of Aircel services, to part with his holding in the company to Anandhakrishnan, a tycoon based in Malaysia. This happened during the tenure of Dayanidhi as the union cabinet minister for information technology and communications (2004 to 2007) . As a mark of gratitude, Anandhakrishnan is believed to have invested Rs 900 crore in the Sun Group.The allegation was made by Sivasankaran himself.
Sons of former union minister late Murasoli Maran and grand nephews of Muthuvel Karunanidhi, the DMK patriarch, Kalanidhi and Dayanidhi accumulated and amassed wealth and properties in unbelievable speed. Besides satellite TV channels in all south Indian languages, the brothers own newspaper, magazines weeklies and FM radio stations in the entire South.
Following raids in their Boat Club Road residences in Chennai last year, there were reports that the Marans were planning to shift their business operations either to South Africa or to a South East Asian nation.
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