India’s fugitive billionaires: how Mehul Choksi, Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi try to escape justice at home by fleeing abroad
- Jewellery magnate Mehul Choksi’s recent arrest in the Caribbean has once again spotlighted the struggles India faces trying to extradite suspects from abroad
- A lack of treaties has seen New Delhi only bring back two economic offenders over the past half-decade – despite having some 313 active Interpol ‘red notices’
Uncle and nephew both fled India in January 2018, days before details of the scandal involving the country’s second-largest lender broke.
However, Choksi’s lawyer Wayne Marsh in Dominica told the media that the businessman had been abducted while on his way to a restaurant for dinner, adding in a statement that it was “fishy that nobody seems to be looking into how exactly he reached Dominica”.
Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne subsequently asked his counterparts in Dominica to repatriate Choksi to India. But Choksi is no longer an Indian citizen, said Marsh, and could not be repatriated.
The fugitive jewellers are not the first Indian tycoons to attempt to flee justice at home by moving abroad, however.
He is accused of, among other things, defaulting on debts of more than US$1.3 billion related to his collapsed airline, including millions of dollars in unpaid wages.
In March this year, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told the upper house of the country’s parliament that “Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi – all of them are coming back to face the law of this land … One after [the] other everybody is coming back to this country to face the law of this country.”
Yet India has a poor track record in securing extraditions. A right to information request filed by a Mumbai-based citizen activist last year revealed that the country had only managed to bring back two fugitive “economic offenders” from abroad over the preceding half-decade.
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This is despite some 313 active “red notices”– Interpol’s most urgent arrest alert – having been issued on behalf of New Delhi, according to a source in the foreign ministry. Of these, 72 relate to fugitive Indian nationals under investigation for financial irregularities and fraud, a former government minister revealed in parliament in February last year.
Much of the reason India struggles to bring its citizens home to face justice is a lack of bilateral agreements with other countries.
“While many nations have extradition treaties with over 100 countries each, India has such arrangements with only 47 countries,” said Kapil Sirohi, a Delhi-based lawyer who specialises in international and extradition law. “We also don’t have treaties with most of our neighbours including China, Pakistan and Myanmar which creates major bottlenecks in bringing back offenders who have fled the country.”
Sirohi said rich Western nations were often happy to offer fugitive tycoons a “quid pro quo” of sorts. “While the country offers them a safe refuge, these cash-lush criminals pour billions into local economies,” he said.
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“Extradition requires a 100 per cent foolproof and watertight case against the accused which [India law enforcement] agencies are often unable to provide,” Sibal said.
“So when they face the laser sharp scrutiny of Western courts, they flounder. Further, these [fugitive] billionaires are represented by the best legal minds who know how to exploit every systemic loophole to ensure their clients don’t get extradited.”
