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Mehul Choksi, the billionaire diamond trader who’s been dodging Indian authorities for over six years, has finally been arrested. Belgian police picked him up over the weekend, and he’s now sitting in jail, sources from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) confirmed Monday morning.
The 65-year-old has been wanted in India for his role in one of the country’s biggest bank frauds — the ₹13,850 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam.
Arrest Based on Old Warrants
According to a report in The Economic Times, the Belgian police acted on two arrest warrants issued by a Mumbai court years ago — one in May 2018 and another in June 2021. Both were open-ended, meaning Choksi could be arrested whenever he was found.
Now that he’s finally been caught, he’s expected to apply for bail soon. Sources say he plans to argue for an immediate release, claiming health issues and other personal reasons.
The Scam That Rocked a Nation
Choksi and his nephew, Nirav Modi, are both accused of cheating Punjab National Bank out of nearly ₹14,000 crore. Investigators from the CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) say the duo pulled off the scam by bribing bank officials at the Brady House branch in Mumbai. With their help, they allegedly got unauthorized letters of undertaking (LoUs) and foreign letters of credit (FLCs) to move huge sums of money overseas.
They quietly slipped out of India in January 2018 — just before the scam came to light — and have been avoiding Indian authorities ever since.
Living Quietly in Belgium
Though he’s been missing from India for years, Choksi wasn’t exactly hiding in the shadows. Belgian authorities confirmed last month that he had been living in Antwerp — a well-known hub for the diamond trade — along with his wife, Preeti Choksi, who is a Belgian citizen.
He reportedly holds a Belgian residency card, which helped him stay in the country without trouble.
When NDTV reached out to Belgium’s foreign ministry, they said, “the FPS Foreign Affairs continues to closely follow the developments in this important case.” While they didn’t go into any specifics, they acknowledged they were aware of Choksi’s presence and were keeping a close eye on things.
India’s Crackdown on Fraudsters
Choksi is originally from India but became a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda in 2017 under the country’s citizenship-by-investment program. He later claimed to have left Antigua in 2021 for medical treatment, but then mysteriously vanished. That turned into an international mystery when he was found days later in Dominica — another Caribbean nation.
At the time, he claimed he’d been kidnapped and taken there against his will. The situation dragged on in court, but he eventually returned to Antigua, where he had been staying until reports surfaced that he had moved to Belgium.
While Choksi was hopping countries, Indian authorities were working to get some of the lost money back. In December last year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told Parliament that assets worth ₹22,280 crore linked to fugitives like Choksi had been recovered or sold off. That money is being used to repay the banks that were defrauded.
