10 people declared fugitive economic offenders since 2018: Govt

Ten people, including liquor baron Vijay Mallya and diamond merchant Nirav Modi, have been declared as fugitive economic offenders

New Delhi: Ten people, including liquor baron Vijay Mallya and diamond merchant Nirav Modi, have been declared as fugitive economic offenders by courts since 2018, Rajya Sabha was informed on Tuesday.

The Fugitive Economic Offenders Act (FEOA) was enacted by the Narendra Modi government in 2018 to crackdown on those who are charged with high-value economic frauds and abscond from the country to evade the law.

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Minister of State (MoS) for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary, in a written reply, said the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed FEOA applications against 19 people till now.

Of them, he said, 10 people — Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Nitin Jayantilal Sandesara, Chetan Jayantilal Sandesara, Dipti Chetan Jayantilal Sandesara, Hitesh Kumar Narendrabhai Patel, Junaid Iqbal Memon, Hajra Iqbal Memon, Asif Iqbal Memon and Ramachandran Vishwanathan — have been declared as fugitive economic offenders by courts.

The amount of “fraud involved in these cases is more than Rs 40,000 crore,” Chaudhary said.
As on date, assets amounting to Rs 15,113.02 crore have been confiscated under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and restituted to public sector banks (in FEOA cases), he said.

The minister added that assets amounting to Rs 873.75 crore have also been “confiscated” under the FEOA in respect of the said fugitive economic offenders.

Four economic offenders have been “deported/extradited” to India by the ED so far, the minister said, replying to a question on how many economic offenders have been deported or extradited to India since 2014.

In a related development, the ED had issued a statement on July 29 saying that a special court in Chennai declared two businessmen as fugitive economic offenders in a money laundering case linked to remittances sent abroad in an alleged illegal manner.

The federal agency identified the two as Sudarshan Venkatraman and Ramanujam Sesharathnam, the erstwhile promoter directors of Zylog Systems Limited.