Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: In order to put pressure overseas for early extradition of alleged financial offenders Mehul Choksi from Antigua and Barbuda and Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallaya from the United Kingdom to face justice in India, the Centre has transferred part of confiscated assets, worth Rs.8,441 crore, to the state-run banks they had duped.
The federal agency said that extradition requests have been sent to the countries where the three accused are living. Mallya and Modi live in London, while Choksi fled to Antigua and Barbuda.
The Finance Ministry’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) had seized these assets in connection with cases related to fugitive economic offenders.
On Wednesday, the ED revealed that the three offenders have defrauded the public sector banks of Rs 22,586 crore, out of which 80 percent (Rs 18,170 crore) has been attached/seized by the federal probe agency.
The total transfer of the attached assets, including the latest ones, stood at Rs. 9,371 crore, which is 40 percent of the banks’ losses, the agency said, adding these also include the latest attachment of confiscated assets worth Rs 329 crore.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Twitter, “Fugitives & economic offenders will be actively pursued; their properties attached & dues recovered.”
The “PSBs have already recovered Rs 1,357 crore by selling such shares. A total of Rs 9,041 crore shall be realized by banks through sale of such attached assets.”
ED said it unearthed the money trail by exposing a web of domestic and international transactions and unearthing assets stashed abroad. The investigation revealed that the three accused used dummy entities controlled by them for rotation and siphoning off the funds provided by the banks.
Mallya has been denied permission to file an appeal in the UK’s Supreme Court, which has made his extradition to India almost final. Nirav Modi’s extradition to India is on its last leg. Choksi has been contesting a legal battle in Antigua against his extradition process after he was recently jailed in neighboring Dominica for alleged unauthorized entry.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, a High Court in the UK dismissed fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi’s written appeal against his extradition to India. A key accused in the Rs 13,500 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam along with his uncle Mehul Choksi, Nirav had filed a written application before the court against an extradition order issued by the Westminster Magistrate’s court. Any possible rejection now of his oral submission in the High Court, currently pending, will pave the way for his extradition.
UK Home Secretary Priti Patel had, on April 15, ordered his extradition to India. Nirav is currently lodged at the Wandsworth prison in London since his arrest on March 19, 2019.