The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
THE MOMENT MICK GOT HIS MAN
Soho Square where he was engaged in a new diamond business.
We had watched and surreptitiously photographed Modi – or at least the man we thought was Modi – over several days. He looked heavier than the figure seen in photographs from the previous few years, posing with celebrities at the opening of one or other of his chain of jewellery shops, and shaking hands with the Prince of Wales at a charity function in New Delhi. In those photographs Modi was clean-shaven. This man had a distinctive handlebar moustache.
From my vantage point I could see the door of the premises where Modi had his office. Standing a short distance away, half hidden behind the railings of the square, was The Telegraph’s chief reporter, Robert Mendick, looking up at the first floor of the building. He gestured to me. He could see the man we believed to be Modi at the window, slipping on his jacket – apparently readying to leave.
With our videographer, Emma Mills,
list) now presents a sorry figure, desperate to avoid being returned to India, and the prospect of a trial that could potentially see him facing life imprisonment.
It is an extraordinary fall for a man who in the space of just 10 years rose from being an unknown diamond wholesaler in Mumbai to ‘begged’ him to create a pair of earrings for her, and he obliged with a pair made of large white solitaires, encircled by a ring of diamonds, firing up a hitherto dormant passion for jewellery design. In the same year, the diamond market crashed, and suddenly rare pink, blue and white flawless diamonds above 10ct were readily available at reduced prices. This was Modi’s chance, and in 2010 he launched the Nirav Modi brand.
His designs were cleverly tailored to have international appeal, using the traditional rose cut and motifs of Indian jewellery, but without the usual gold or enamel settings, lending his pieces a lighter, sparer look – ‘as beautiful on the back as on the front’, as one jewellery expert puts it. He admitted that he himself was unable to draw – he would simply describe what he wanted to a team of designers.
In 2014, Modi opened his first store in New Delhi; more followed in short order – in Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Macau and Beijing. His ambitions were limitless.