The United Kingdom’s Home Secretary has referred India’s request for the extradition of multi-crore Punjab National Bank fraud case fugitive Nirav Modi to a court there for initiating legal proceedings against him, according to a senior Enforcement Directorate official.
“Our extradition request was pending consideration with the UK’s Home Secretary for the last over six months. We have learnt that it was referred to the court concerned a couple of days ago. Both the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation had moved the requests in July-August last year,” said the official.
After filing charge sheets against Mr. Modi and others, the agencies had got an Interpol Red Notice issued against him last year. “In response to a diffusion notice seeking his whereabouts, the UK authorities had in August 2018 confirmed his presence there. However, the UK Police has not yet detained him. It seems the court may now initiate legal action against him as and when it takes cognisance of the matter,” the official said.
In the first week of January last year, Mr. Modi had left the country along with his family members, including co-accused Mehul Choksi who has taken citizenship of Antigua, days before the CBI registered cases against them. Based on the FIRs, the ED also initiated money laundering investigations.
In its first charge sheet, which was filed in May 2018, the ED arraigned Mr. Modi and 23 other accused persons and entities. The agency had by then established alleged diversion of $629.21 million dollars (about ₹4,302 crore) by them. The funds were traced to the United States, Hong Kong, Belgium and Dubai.
Among those named in the charge sheet were Mr. Nirav Modi’s father Deepak Modi, brother Neeshal, sister Purvi and her husband Mayank Mehta, and Nehal Modi.
The fugitive businessman’s three companies — Solar Exports, Stellar Diamonds and Diamonds R US — had allegedly got Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) for ₹6,498 crore fraudulently issued through the PNB’s Brady House branch in Mumbai.
“The funds so obtained by the said three entities were partly used for payments to various overseas companies and also for offsetting earlier LoUs. Payments were made to 17 overseas entities in Hong Kong, Dubai and the United States since 2011 in the guise of export or import,” the ED had alleged.
The directors and shareholders of these companies were the current or former employees of Firestar group of companies, who were working on the directions of Mr. Nirav Modi and his other trusted officials such as Shyamsunder Wadhwa, Aditya Nanavati, Mihir Bhansali and Saju Poulose, as alleged.
The modus operandi involved fraudulent import or export, wherein there were no actual manufacturing activities undertaken in any of the dummy overseas companies. The invoices of export/import were overvalued to a huge extent so as to inflate the balance sheets and procure high credit facilities from banks.
According to the agency, the export or import shown on paper was just rotational transactions.
“The jewellery exported from India was dismantled, the diamonds/pearls taken out of it and gold/silver were sent for melting. The melted metal was re-exported to Dubai or India and precious stones like diamonds and pearls were separately re-exported to India. The whole process was carried out without any substantial value addition and was only for inflating the turnover of Indian companies,” the agency alleges.
The CBI has also filed charge sheets against Mr. Nirav Modi, Mr. Choksi and others in the two criminal cases. India is already pursuing the request for Mr. Choksi’s extradition from Antigua.
