Nirav Modi’s Rs 329.66 Cr Assets Including UK, UAE Flats Seized

Fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi.

(Photo Courtesy: The Quint)

The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday, 8 July confiscated attached properties of fugitive businessman Nirav Modi totalling to Rs 329.66 crore to the Central government under the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018 (FEOA).

The confiscated properties are in the form of four flats at the iconic building Samudra Mahal in Worli Mumbai, one seaside farmhouse and land in Alibaug, wind mill in Jaisalmer, flat in London and residential flats in UAE, shares and bank deposits.

The confiscation comes just weeks after the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 12 June denied Modi bail. The court was hearing Modi’s appeal against an earlier order by a lower court that had denied him bail, as he fights extradition attempts from Britain to India.

“The reality is that he is not the cold-blooded hardened criminal as claimed by the government of India, but a jewellery designer from a long line of diamond dealers, and regarded as being honest, careful and reliable,” Clare Montgomery, Nirav's barrister, had said in her opening arguments in the hearing.

Modi had already been denied bail at three previous attempts at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, as the judge ruled there was “substantial risk” that he would fail to surrender and deemed the bail security offered as insufficient.

Modi was arrested by Scotland Yard officers in London on 19 March and faces extradition to India as the "principal beneficiary" of the fraudulent issuance of letters of undertaking (LoUs) as part of a conspiracy to defraud the Punjab National Bank (PNB) and then laundering the money.