Shashi Tharoor clarifies on calling George Soros an old friend, says 'knew him from...'

Congress leader and Lok Sabha member Shashi Tharoor has issued a clarification for a 2009 X post where he called the controversial American investor George Soros an 'old friend'.

Congress leader and Lok Sabha member Shashi Tharoor on Sunday clarified his old X (former Twitter) post in which he mentioned an American investor as an old friend. Tharoor said that Soros was a friend in a 'social' sense and he never received any penny from him. 

"I knew Soros well in my UN days as an upstanding international-minded resident of New York. He was a friend in the social sense: I have never received or solicited a penny from him or any of his foundations for myself or any institution or cause I supported," Shashi Tharoor's X post reads. 

The Congress MP posted about George Soros on May 26, 2009, and his post resurfaced when Union Minister Kiren Rijiju reshared the post and wrote, "India cannot be fooled, threatened, or ignored. Enough of sycophancy and bootlicking to those who still treat India as a third-world begging country. Time has changed."

Rijiju's remarks followed the BJP's allegations that Congress leader Sonia Gandhi has links to an organisation backed by the George Soros Foundation.

In the clarification issued by Shashi Tharoor on December 15, 2024, he also stated that he had only met Soros once more after the 2009 tweet. "That was at the home of then-Ambassador and now-BJP Minister @hardeepspuri when I was visiting NY as MoS MEA. Amb Puri had invited a number of prominent Americans for a dinner discussion with me (and that was entirely appropriate)."  

Tharoor, who served as UN Under-Secretary-General from 2002 to 2007, highlighted that his past relationship with Soros had no political or financial motives. "I hope this clarifies matters to those misguided enough to make an absurd allegation out of a fifteen-year-old innocuous tweet," he concluded the X post. 

ALSO READ: Congress attacking Dhankhar to divert attention from Soros issue: Kiren Rijiju