The five-day extradition trial of fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi to face major financial crime charges in India is scheduled to begin in Westminster Magistrates Court on Monday through September 11, with objections, arguments and counterarguments made so far that they resonate with those of the case of businessman Vijay Mallya.
Modi, 49, is the subject of two extradition requests: one processed by the Central Investigation Office (CBI) and the other by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED). Housed in Wandsworth Jail since his arrest in March 2019, he has been denied bail five times.
Under UK extradition rules, the court will have to determine whether there is a prima facie case of fraud and money laundering mentioned in the material provided by the Indian government; reaching a guilty judgment is not the purpose of the trial.
More hearings are expected later in the year and an extradition ruling is expected in December. The ruling will take the form of a recommendation to the interior secretary whether there are obstacles to Modi’s extradition or not.
The charges against Modi involve a Mumbai branch of the Punjab National Bank (PNB) that extended loans worth more than 11.3 billion rupees to its companies. The CBI case is related to large-scale fraud against PNB, through the fraudulent obtaining of Letters of Understanding (LOU / loan agreements); the ED case refers to the laundering of the proceeds of this fraud.
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The second extradition request was made on the basis of two additional offenses as part of the CBI case. It was certified by Home Secretary Priti Patel on February 20, as required by the 1993 UK-India extradition treaty.
The additional offenses relate to allegations that Modi interfered with the IWC investigation by “causing evidence to disappear” and intimidating witnesses (“criminal intimidation to cause death”).
The case of India is that Modi and his companies obtained loans without credit facilities; without providing the necessary cash margin; without proper documentation; without paying an adequate commission and LOUs are not correctly registered in the PNB systems; and whose income was unduly diverted to the reimbursement of previous LOUs and / or the benefit of a series of related companies controlled by Modi.
The case of India, represented in court by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), is that fraudulent LOUs would not have been issued without the active participation of co-defendant PNB officers.
The documents presented in the Modi case refer to various questions of law, objections and rulings made in the Vijay Mallya case, since Modi’s defense raised similar objections to extradition: the lack of a prima facie case, the alleged impossibility of a fair trial in India, and risk to human rights in the Arthur Road jail in Mumbai.
The CPS refers to the Mallya case in its argumentative skeleton in the Modi case to refute or respond to the arguments of Modi’s defense, noting that many of the objections raised had been rejected in the Mallya judgments.
The CPS held that there is no evidence “to justify a departure from the approach taken in Mallya” on the issue of the lack of a prima facie case, the admissibility of the evidence presented by India, or on the sovereign guarantee of the Ministry of the Interior in that country. . No risk to human rights in Mumbai jail.
Despite offering to increase the bail amount to £ 4 million, UK courts rejected Modi’s bail on the grounds that he posed a risk and had the means to influence witnesses and alter evidence.
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