ED moves to get Nirav, Choksi declared fugitive economic offenders

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday moved a special Mumbai court against diamond traders Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi seeking to get them declared fugitive economic offenders under the recently promulgated Fugitive Economic Offenders Ordinance.


This will be the second such application moved by the ED after Vijay Mallya to prosecute the evaders who have fled the country swindling thousands of crores of the taxpayers’ money from public sector banks.

Once declared “fugitive’ by the court, economic offenders holed up overseas will lose all their assets as the new law empowers the government to confiscate all their assets in India and abroad. The ED has already attached assets of both Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, the fair market value of which has been estimated to be over Rs 3,500 crore. Both Choksi and Modi are accused of bank frauds to the tune of over Rs 13,000 crore.

The ordinance identifies, “fugitive economic offender means any individual against whom a warrant for arrest in relation to a scheduled offence has been issued by any court in India, who has left India so as to avoid criminal prosecution; or being abroad, refuses to return to India to face criminal prosecution.”


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