Fugitive diamond merchant Mehul Choksi has been arrested in Belgium. He has looted many banks for about 14 thousand crores. After the arrest, now such information related to the action agencies on his property in Mumbai has been revealed, which will surprise anyone. The walls of Choksi and his wife’s flat are filled with notice of investigating agencies. Mehul Choksi’s assets worth crores of rupees have been seized on South Mumbai, Dadar and Charani Road. Choksi and his wife Preeti have a duplex flat on the 9th and 10th floors in the ‘Gokul Apartment’, adjacent to the sea in Valkeshwar, a very posh and expensive area of South Mumbai. It has been sealed by the Enforcement Directorate and CBI.
In these flats, dozens of notices of PNB Bank, SBI Bank and many other banks are sticking. There are so many notices and summons that there is no place left to paste the doors and walls and notices. Notice in hundreds of hundreds, bank loan recovery papers, summons of CBI and ED, summons, electricity bills, water bills and many such documents are scattered on the ground… neither are they going to see them nor are they going to answer them.
ED’s petition pending for seven years
Explain that the Enforcement Directorate had filed a petition filed in July 2018 to declare Mehul Choksi as a fugitive economic criminal (FEO), which has been pending in a Mumbai court for the last seven years. An ED official said, our application is pending in court since 2018. The hearing is being postponed repeatedly. An immediate decision should be taken in this matter.
What does FEO Act say?
Under the FEO Act, a person can be declared a fugitive economic offender when he falls under the category of economic crime of Rs 100 crore or more. Also, a warrant has been issued against him and he has left India and escaped. If the court declares Choksi as an FEO, the ED can confiscate his properties. However, as long as the matter is hanging, the legal action of the agency will not be able to proceed.
Also read- When is the criminal declared a fugitive, how will the government bring back Mahul Choksi?