- Over 10,000 luxury watches imported by billionaire jeweler, Nirav Modi, have been seized by authorities in India
- Modi is alleged to have defrauded India’s second largest state-run bank, the Punjab National Bank, of 1.8 billion dollars
- The billionaire is currently on-the-run, and was last sighted in New York after his appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos
Indian authorities have seized over 10,000 imported luxury watches belonging to disgraced billionaire jeweler Nirav Modi and his firms in connection with the country’s biggest-ever bank fraud of 1.8 billion U.S. dollars, an enforcement official said Saturday, February 24, NAN reports.
“All the luxury watches were meant for sale through Modi’s jewellery stores across India.
“Earlier, we froze shares and mutual funds of Modi and also seized his nine luxury cars include Porsche Panamera, Rolls Royce Ghost and Mercedes Benz,” said the official.
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NAIJ.com gathers that Modi is said to have defrauded Punjab National Bank, India’s second largest state-run bank, of 1.8 billion dollars, though he said that he owed the bank only 775 million dollars, in a letter sent to the bank’s management.
Investigators have so far arrested 12 people, including high-ranking bank officials, for their alleged involvement in the fraud.
But the jeweler, the mastermind of the massive fraud, is said to have fled the country and was reportedly last seen in New York after his appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos as a part of an Indian delegation.
However, India has not yet charged Modi and only suspended his passport as well as his uncle and business partner Mehul Choksi’s for four weeks, threatening to take strict legal action in case of his failure to respond to the government’s notice.
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In a related development, NAIJ.com previously reported that eighty six luxury vehicles, together with four houses and a quarry plant in Abuja, belonging to a civil servant, Ibrahim Tumsah, were to be forfeited to the federal government, on the orders of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory in Apo, Abuja.
Following an ex parte application filed by the recently constituted Special Investigation Panel on the Recovery of Public Property on behalf of the federal government, Justice Muawiyah Idris of the FCT High Court made the interim forfeiture orders.
The panel informed the court that Tumsah, from whom the multi-million naira assets were seized, was able to acquire all the assets between 2016 and 2017, while on a monthly salary of less than N500,000.
The luxury of corruption - on NAIJ.com TV:
Source: Naija.ng
ROSY CREST
Saturday 24 February 2018