Belgian Minister To Decide Mehul Choksi Extradition Request To India [Report]

Belgium's Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden will decide on India's request on Fugitive diamond trader Mehul Choksi for extradition and the charges under which she has been arrested, Hindustan Times reported citing people familiar with the procedure in the European country.

Verlinden will consider India's extradition request, reviewing whether it complies with Belgium's legal requirements and satisfies the "dual criminality" test - i.e., the charges, such as embezzlement, bribery, and international crime, are crimes in both nations.

"If Verlinden is convinced that India's request has substance, meets the 'dual criminality' criteria of embezzlement, transnational crime and bribery being crimes in both countries, then she will approve his arrest as legal after which the matter will be marked to a court for formal extradition proceedings," the English daily quoted an officer at an Indian federal investigation agency as saying.

Choksi was arrested based on a foreign arrest warrant issued by Belgian prosecutors on November 25, 2024, after India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) formally submitted an extradition request on August 27. "It's just a formality. The accused will be produced before the minister of justice. It is generally approved by the minister since originally the arrest is approved by their office," another officer said.

Extradition Under Which Sections

Extradition has been requested under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections - 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 201 (destruction of evidence), 409 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 477A (falsification of accounts), and sections 7 and 13 (bribery) under the prevention of corruption act. Meanwhile, Choksi's legal team is pushing to bypass Verlinden and have him presented directly before the Antwerp Court of First Instance. His lawyer, Vijay Aggarwal, stated, "We might file a plea that he should be produced before the court only." Aggarwal also confirmed plans to appeal Choksi's detention, citing his client's ongoing cancer treatment as a key factor.

Mehul Choksi, once a prominent name in India's diamond industry, was the chairman of Gitanjali Gems Ltd. This publicly traded company operated thousands of retail outlets in India and abroad. Choksi had escaped India in 2018 after being accused of defrauding Punjab National Bank of over Rs 13,800 crore along with his nephew, Nirav Modi, his wife, Ami Modi, and his brother Neeshal Modi. The fraud involves false letter of undertaking amounting to Rs 10,000 crore by the bank.

The two businessmen colluded with the bank staff to obtain fake Letters of Undertakings (LoUs) at PNB's Brady House branch in Fort, Mumbai. The LoUs were secured by Choksi's firm, Geetanjali Gems, to secure loans from foreign banks for the import of pearls for a period of one year, for which Reserve Bank of India guidelines lay out a total time period of 90 days from the date of shipment.

This regulation was not followed by foreign branches of Indian banks. The loans were reportedly fake because they were given without a sanctioned limit or cash margin, and no entries were recorded in PNB's central banking system to evade detection.

Following the revelations in early 2018, Choksi fled India and acquired citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda under its citizenship-by-investment program. Using documents belonging to his wife, Preeti Choksi- a Belgian national- Choksi managed to secure a residency card from Belgium on November 15, 2024, enabling him to reside legally in the country.