The presidential race is hotting up in the United States. A leading US daily has questioned Democratic leader Hillary Rodham Clinton's choice of NRI businessman Sant Chatwal, who faced allegations of forfeiting tax, as a fund-raiser.
"The founder of the Bombay Palace restaurant chain, Chatwal, is one of a growing number of fund-raisers in the 2008 presidential campaign whose backgrounds have prompted questions about how much screening the candidates devote to their "bundlers" while they press to raise record amounts," the Washington Post said.
The American internal revenue service pursued Chatwal for approximately $4 million in unpaid business taxes, while New York placed a lien seeking more than $5 million in taxes, it claimed.
"Yet none of the legal and financial woes -- occasionally touched on in American or Indian newspapers or highlighted by political opponents -- raised red flags inside Hillary's fund-raising operation,' the daily said.
Chatwal recently said he planned to help raise $5 million from Indian-Americans for Hillary's presidential bid. A spokesman for Clinton Phil Singer said Chatwal's background caused no concerns about his activities on behalf of the campaign and Rajen Anand, a long-time friend of Chatwal and another Clinton fund-raiser, said the campaign encouraged strict vetting for fund-raisers.
"They advise me to be very careful not to associate the campaign with people where there is something wrong," Anand has been cited in the paper.
"The man came to this country, accumulated an empire, lost it during the time of real estate (softness), and has struggled and worked to try to pay off his debts," Mitchell Greene, Chatwal's lawyer for 25 years, said.
"It has been a long battle, but he has cleared up all of his obligations, and in the process he is trying to accumulate his wealth again," Greene said.
The focus on Chatwal came against the backdrop of Clinton's major 2008 fund-raiser Norman Hsu surrendering to authorities on an outstanding warrant in a 15-year-old California criminal case involving allegations of grand theft.
A judge ordered him held on $2 million bail until a hearing next week. The Hillary campaign gave to charity $23,000 in donations from Hsu himself, though not the $96,000 or more he had raised for the candidate.
"I think she did the right thing giving the money back pending resolution of his case," Hillary's husband and former US president Bill Clinton said.
"If the other people say they gave the money of their own accord, then I think she should keep it," Clinton added. Chatwal, it is alleged, forfeited a building to New York City on which he was delinquent on property taxes and was sued by federal regulators seeking to recoup millions of dollars in loans from a failed bank where he served as a director. However, Chatwal's lawyer said there was nothing wrong with his client raising political money even as he worked to clear up the legal and financial matters.