• March 20, 2019

Nirav Modi arrested in London, offers to pay £500,000 for bail, court turns it down; in custody till March 29

LONDON March 20: Nirav Modi, the celebrity jeweller wanted in a 13,000-crore Punjab National Bank scam, was arrested in London on Tuesday after a yearlong chase that spanned several countries and became symbolic of India’s inability to catch high-profile offenders.

He was picked up yesterday from a metro station Holborn, central London, said officers in the Enforcement Directorate, which is probing the case against him.

Produced within hours at the Metropolitan Magistrate’s court, he had offered half-a-million pounds as bail bond, but the court turned it down. He will be in jail till March 29, when the next hearing will take place.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED), early this month, had said that United Kingdom’s home secretary Sajid Javid had referred India’s request for extraditing Modi to a court for initiating legal proceedings against the diamantaire.
A British daily had recently published a report and video showing Modi walking in the streets of London and said the fugitive diamantaire was living in a swanky 8 million pounds apartment in the city’s West End and that he was involved in a new diamond business.
The ED and the CBI are investigating Modi, his uncle Mehul Choksi and others for alleged money laundering and corruption to perpetrate the alleged scam in the Brady House branch of the PNB in Mumbai that was unearthed last year.
Modi, 48, is currently living in a three-bedroom flat occupying half of a floor of the landmark Centre Point tower block in London, where rent is estimated to cost 17,000 pounds a month, The Telegraph newspaper of the UK had reported.
Modi has been chargesheeted by both the agencies and the ED has also attached his assets worth Rs 1,873.08 crore under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), and has also seized assets linked to him and his family worth Rs 489.75 crore.