Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi are both high-profile business men from India who have been accused of corruption and financial fraud. Both flew to London to cover their financial scams in India. Why these Indian scamsters are hiding in London? Is London the safest city for Indian fraudsters to hide and change their face?
Last year in February, UK’s then home secretary Priti Patel signed an extradition order for Nirav Modi, accusing $2 billion in bank fraud in India. Moreover, Vijay Mallya, the owner of Kingfisher Airlines, is also facing extradition. Both Nirav Modi and Mallya have denied the charges against them and have been extradition to India.
Why London is the safest for Indian Fraudsters
According to the news sources, London is generally considered one of the safest cities, with a low crime rate when compared with other cities in the world. People like Nirav Modi, Vijay Modi and Lalit Modi have escaped to London to cover the financial frauds and scams they committed in India.
The UK provides special facilities to people from different countries, such as Golden Visa. As per Golden visa, if you invest 2 million pounds in the UK you will get Golden Visa. With this visa, you can live easily and freely within the country for a few years. However, it also provides various facilities that allow people to live there for a lifetime.
Indian government requested the UK government to hand over 131 people to India in the last few years. Sadly out of 131 criminals, only 1% of persons have been handed over to India by the British government. Not only India but also people from various countries move to London after committing fraud which, includes Pakistan’s former PM Nawaz Sharif in the list.
Who is Vijay Mallya? Why he fled to the UK?
According to the news sources, Vijay Mallya, the former chairman of United Breweries Group. It was famously known for its beer, ‘Kingfisher’. In the year 2005, he started Kingfisher airlines. Due to the global recession and increase in oil prices, the debts of Kingfisher started to rise. He was accused of defaulting on loans worth more than Rs. 9000 crores from various Indian banks.
Kingfisher airlines shut its operations despite its vast debts. CBI conducted raids on his properties and estates related to his loan provided by IDBI bank and questioned him.
Later in 2016, SBI registered a complaint against Mallya which made him fly away to the UK on the same day. Ministry of External Affairs cancelled Mallya’s passport, and ED issued a non-bailable warrant against him.
Mallya was arrested in the UK after India’s extradition in 2017. He approached Karnataka high court to sell his assets to repay the debts. In 2021 PMLA court allowed Mallya to sell his properties worth Rs 5646 crore to collect debts from the banks.
Who is Nirav Modi? Why he fled to the UK?
Nirav Modi is a businessman and diamond merchant. He is the founder of Firestar Diamond company in India. He has been accused of fraud involving the PNB, one of India’s largest banks. The fraud is estimated to a worth more than RS. 13000 crores through fraudulent letters of undertaking. It is one of India’s biggest financial scams in history.
In 2018, he fled to the UK shortly before the fraud was detected. The UK arrested him in 2019 on extradition requests from India.
According to the reports, Nirav Modi and his associates allegedly used fraudulent letters of undertaking (LoUs) from PNB to get loans from the bank. The fraud was exposed when the PNB officials found differences in transactions. The LoUs are usually used for genuine trade transactions.
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