$1.3bn Seized from Choksi, Modi and Mallya is Returned to Indian Banks
June 24, 21
(IDEX Online) - Assets worth a total of $1.3bn seized from diamond fugitives Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, and businessman Vijay Mallya, have been returned to the banks in India from which they were allegedly defrauded.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which investigates economic crime in India, said on Tuesday that it had unraveled a web of dummy entities at home and abroad used to rotate and siphon off bank funds.
It said in a press release that it had recovered 80 per cent of the missing money, and had so far returned half of that amount to a consortium of public sector banks, that had allegedly been cheated out of a total of $3bn.
Mehul Choksi, 62, remains in custody in Dominica after disappearing last month from his new home on the Caribbean "citizenship by investment" island of Antigua.
He and his nephew Nirav Modi are both accused of defrauding the Punjab National Bank out of $1.85bn and are both fighting extradition back to India.
Modi, 49 has been in custody since he was arrested in London in March 2019.
Mallya, 65, a former MP declared a fugitive economic offender by an Indian court, is fighting extradition from the UK over an alleged fraud at his defunct Kingfisher Airlines.
Pic (L-R) shows Choksi and Modi