By Agencies
United Kingdom’s Home Secretary Priti Patel on Friday approved the extradition of fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi wanted in India in cases of fraud and money laundering.
On February 25, a Westminster Magistrates’ Court had allowed Modi’s extradition.
The UK court in its verdict had said that Nirav Modi not only has a case to answer in the Indian courts but that there is no evidence to suggest he would not receive a fair trial in India.
For those whose memories need jogging, our columnist Shankkar Aiyar captured what the one-time jeweller to stars is guilty of succinctly: “He got the Punjab National Bank to back him with letters of undertaking without any underlying asset or money to enter into a series of transactions, possibly incestuous, with related parties, and used the proceeds to build a giant bubble” – one pegged at over Rs 14000 crore.
The 49-year-old jeweller was repeatedly denied bail due to the seriousness of the allegations against him and remained behind bars in a London prison since his arrest in March 2019.
Shankkar Aiyar’s observations again: “What did Nirav Modi engineer? He systematically created a business model that was aligned between institutional incapacity, individual avarice, regulatory regression and patronage politics. Could all of this have been possible without influence and patronage? Shorn of technical details—the recording of LOUs, the linking of SWIFT to core banking, the reconciliation of commitments—Modi managed to corner public monies to fund private ambitions. And mind you this (Punjab National Bank – PNB) is the second-largest public sector bank we are talking about.”
