UK court extends Nirav Modi’s judicial remand to Aug 6

PTI, Jul 9, 2020, 4:10 PM IST

London: Fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, who is fighting extradition to India, was on Thursday, July 9 further remanded in custody until August 6 after he appeared at a regular remand hearing before a UK court on charges over the nearly USD 2 billion Punjab National Bank fraud and money laundering case.

The 49-year-old jeweler, who has been lodged at Wandsworth Prison in south-west London since his arrest in March last year, appeared via videolink before Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London for a regular 28-day “call-over” hearing until the second leg of his extradition trial begins in September.

“Nice to see you looking well,” said Judge Arbuthnot, as she informed Modi of his next video link call-over hearing on August 6.

In May, District Judge Samuel Goozee presided over the first part of the extradition trial, held in a partial remote setting due to the coronavirus lockdown restrictions, with the second part scheduled for a five-day hearing from September 7.

“I hope Mr. Modi by the time we get to September, the current restrictions on movement from prisons have been eased and you can be in court in person to follow the proceedings,” the judge had told Modi, at the end of a four-day partial hearing of the case on May 14.

Modi had been following the court proceedings from a room at Wandsworth Prison and could be seen taking notes during the course of the trial.

The first part of the case focused on establishing a prima facie case against him but the schedule had to be re-timetabled as the government of India submitted a further set of documents as “corroboratory evidence”.

The judge allowed the additional evidence to be introduced but agreed that Modi’s defense team would require enough time to “digest” them.

Therefore, a hearing already planned to deal with a second extradition request, made by the Indian authorities and certified by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel earlier this year on two additional charges of “causing the disappearance of evidence” and intimidating witnesses or “criminal intimidation to cause death”, has been effectively extended to conclude the prima facie case arguments.

The judge has indicated that the two requests are “inextricably linked” and therefore he would be handing down an overall judgment at the conclusion of the second hearing, scheduled between September 7 and 11.

The charges against the diamond merchant centre around his firms Diamonds R Us, Solar Exports and Stellar Diamonds making fraudulent use of a credit facility offered by the Punjab National Bank (PNB), known as “letters of undertaking” (LoUs).

Modi’s team has sought to counter the allegations of fraud by deposing witnesses to establish the volatility of the gems trade and that the LoUs were standard practice.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), arguing on behalf of the Indian government, has been laying out the case that a number of PNB staff conspired with Modi to ensure LoUs were issued to his companies without ensuring they were subject to the required credit check, without recording the issuance of the LoUs and without charging the required commission upon the transactions.

This resulted in a fraud amounting to nearly USD 2 billion.