Jeweller loses sheen
Since 2014, a year after Nirav Modi first appeared on the Forbes billionaire list, the billionaire has been under the scanner of law enforcement agencies. .
Nirav Modi, the man at the centre of the alleged $1.77 billion banking fraud at Punjab National Bank (PNB), is a regular on the pages of some of the world’s leading international financial dailies and fashion magazines, advertising for stores on glamorous high streets.
There’s 31 Old Bond Street in London and 727 Madison Avenue in New York. In Mumbai, his store will soon replace the iconic Rhythm House at Colaba, which shuttered in 2016. Billboards with brand ambassador Priyanka Chopra are plastered all across India’s commercial capital.
But, for some years now, life for the 47-year-old billionaire has been anything but glamorous. Since 2014, a year after he first appeared on the Forbes billionaire list, Modi has been under the scanner of law enforcement agencies—the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) — as well as the tax department for alleged illegal transactions and frauds.
In 2014, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) called him out for alleged diversion of imported, duty-free, cut and polished diamonds and pearls to the domestic market. The DRI called it a violation of import-export norms. Currently, he is the focus of a CBI inquiry for allegedly cheating PNB.