Nirav Modi can be sent to India, says UK judge
NEW DELHI: A UK court on Thursday cleared the extradition of fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi to India, finding him guilty of fraud and money laundering in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam and dismissing his claims that he won’t get a fair trial at home.
The decision was perceived as a major victory for the Indian government and investigation agencies – Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) – which provided detailed evidence against the billionaire diamond merchant who fled India in January 2018 after siphoning off around ₹6,498 crore. Modi allegedly obtained the amount through fraudulent Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) in the name of several of his companies.
Asserting that Modi has a case to answer, judge Sam Goozee of the Westminster Magistrates’ Court said that he, along with his brother Nehal Modi and others, had defrauded the public sector bank, laundered the money taken from it and conspired to destroy evidence and intimidate witnesses.
“The judge has decided to send the case to the [UK] home secretary [Priti Patel] to decide whether to order his extradition to India,” said a spokesperson for the British high commission in New Delhi.
Patel has two months to decide whether to order the extradition. Modi can approach the UK high court to appeal against his extradition, though such an appeal won’t be heard until after the UK home secretary’s decision.
External affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava told a regular news briefing that the UK judge had observed that Modi conspired to destroy evidence and intimidate witnesses. “Now since the magistrate’s court has recommended Nirav Modi’s extradition to the UK home secretary, the Government
of India would liaise with the UK authorities for his early extradition to India.” Modi attended Thursday’s hearing virtually from Wandsworth prison, where he has been held since he was arrested by UK authorities on March 19, 2019, in response to an extradition request from India.
Last year, India won extradition proceedings against former liquor baron Vijay Mallya in UK courts, but his extradition has been held up due to secret legal proceedings, as claimed by the British government. Mallya is learnt to have applied for asylum in the UK.
Delivering his judgement on Thursday, district judge Goozee said “the circulation of pearls, diamonds and gold between the Nirav Modi firms and the Dubai and Hong Kong based dummy companies was not genuine business and the companies were being used for transferring funds generated in the guise of sale-purchase/export-import of goods colloquially referred to as round tripping transactions”.
The court rejected Modi’s lawyers’ argument and the testimony of experts, including retired Supreme Court judge
Markandey Katju, that he won’t get a fair trial in India and that he was being targeted due to political reasons.
“India is governed by its written constitution which has at its core the fundamental principle of the independence of the judiciary by virtue of the separation of powers between judiciary, the executive and the legislature. There is no cogent or reliable evidence that the judiciary in India is no longer independent, or capable of managing a fair trial even where it is a high-profile fraud with significant media interest. There is no evidence which allows me to find that if extradited Nirav Modi is at real risk of suffering a flagrant denial of justice,” Goozee said in the judgement.
Describing Katju’s testimony as not reliable, the court said it had the “hallmarks of an outspoken critic with his own personal agenda”. The court also said Modi’s extradition is compatible with the Convention Rights within the meaning of Human Rights Act 1998.
Modi’s argument that India has poor prison conditions, a plea taken by Mallya as well during his trial, was rejected, with the court saying that the conditions at Barrack Number 12 in Arthur Road Jail in Maharashtra, where Modi will be held, “are far less restrictive and far more spacious than the current regime he is being held in within the prison estate in our own jurisdiction”.
It also rejected Modi’s submission that extraditing him in his current mental health would be unjust and oppressive. The judgement said that “Indian authorities have capacity to cope properly with Nirav Modi’s mental health and suicidal risk, bolstered by Nirav Modi being able to access private treatments from clinicians”.