Jeweller in $2.5b alleged fraud can be sent to India
The celebrity jeweller at the centre of an alleged $US2 billion ($2.5 billion) fraud that rocked Punjab National Bank three years ago can be extradited to stand trial in India, a London court has ruled.
The judge at Westminster magistrates court on Thursday
(Friday AEDT) found that Nirav Modi had a case to answer in connection with
alleged bank fraud, money laundering and allegedly attempting to subvert the
criminal investigation by threatening to kill a witness.
Modi, who has been held in a London prison for almost two
years, can appeal against extradition. He has denied wrongdoing and claims the
charges against him are politically motivated.
A celebrity jeweller whose elaborate pieces adorned
Hollywood and Bollywood stars, Mr Modi fell from public grace in 2018, when
PNB, India’s second largest state-owned bank, announced it had uncovered a
massive bank fraud.
It claimed that the beneficiaries of the fraud were Mr Modi
– who in the preceding years had set up luxury boutiques in the world’s most
prestigious retail locations – and his uncle, Mehul Choksi, the owner of one of
India’s largest mass market jewellery chains.
By the time the fraud was detected – after the retirement of
a PNB official who allegedly aided the scam – both men had left India.
Mr Choksi, who denies wrongdoing, later surfaced in the Caribbean
nation of Antigua and Barbuda, where he had taken citizenship. But Mr Modi’s
whereabouts remained unknown until March 2019, when he was recognised by a
clerk at a central London bank, where he had gone to open an account.
Shortly before he was found, Mr Modi was filmed walking
around Oxford Street in a distinctive ostrich-leather coat, near a rented
London apartment where his lawyers said he had been living and working.
After his arrest, the jeweller was denied bail as barristers
for the Indian government alleged that he had threatened to kill a witness.
Ashish Lad, a director of one of Mr Modi’s companies, gave a
statement to the extradition hearing saying the jeweller had threatened him in
2018, after the criminal investigation had begun.
Mr Modi “told me that he will get me killed if I do not
follow his instructions . . . I was so scared. I was not expecting such type of
response from Nirav Modi,” Mr Lad said in his testimony.
The jeweller has claimed his human rights would be breached
by his extradition to India, where the case has been the focus of intense media
attention. But the judge said he was confident Mr Modi could get a fair trial.
“Sensationalist media reporting in high profile criminal
cases is not unique to India,” he wrote.
India has had little luck securing the extradition of
disgraced businessmen from the UK. It has been seeking the extradition of
erstwhile liquor baron and airline owner Vijay Mallya since 2017 to stand trial
on charges of financial misconduct following his airline’s bankruptcy.
But although Mr Mallya lost his last appeal last year, the
British government has so far declined to extradite him, citing ongoing confidential,
judicial proceedings in the matter. A UK court even released about £1.1 million
($2 million) of court-held funds to help the tycoon meet his living expenses in
the UK.
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