Congress leader and Lok Sabha member Shashi Tharoor on Sunday clarified that he knew U.S. investor George Soros in a “social sense” and the last time he met Mr. Soros was at Union Minister Hardeep Puri’s residence in New York. File | Photo Credit: ANI

Shashi Tharoor clarifies on calling George Soros a friend

The Congress MP says he last met the U.S. investor at Hardeep Puri’s residence in New York when the latter was a diplomat

by · The Hindu

Congress leader and Lok Sabha member Shashi Tharoor on Sunday (December 15, 2024) clarified that he knew U.S. investor George Soros in a “social sense” and the last time he met Mr. Soros was at Union Minister Hardeep Puri’s residence in New York when Mr. Puri was a diplomat.

The Lok Sabha member from Thiruvananthapuram took to social media platform X to issue this “clarification” after an earlier post of his calling Mr. Soros a friend went viral.

For the past several days, proceedings in Parliament have been held up after the BJP accused the Congress leadership of being in league with Mr. Soros to “destabilise” the Indian government.

In this backdrop, Mr. Tharoor’s post of May 26, 2009, calling Mr Soros a friend, was used to target the Congress.

“Since there is so much unhealthy curiosity about this tweet, I knew Mr. Soros well in my @UN [United Nation] 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,” the Congress MP said on Sunday (December 15, 2024).

Explaining the contest of his meeting, Mr. Tharoor said, “I only met Mr. Soros once more after this tweet, and that was at the home of then-Ambassador and now-BJP Minister @hardeepspuri when i was visiting NY as MoS [Minister of State] MEA”.

During that period, Mr. Puri was India’s permanent representative to the United Nations. “Amb Puri had invited a number of prominent Americans for a dinner discussion with me (and that was entirely appropriate). I have not been in touch with Mr. Soros since, nor be with me, and my old relationship never had any political connotations,” Mr. Tharoor added.

Though the Congress MP said he hopes his latest post would clarify the “absurd allegations out of a fifteen-year-old innocuous tweet. But knowing how the troll factory works. I have no doubt it won’t!”

Published - December 15, 2024 10:07 pm IST