London: The New Safe Haven For Scamsters From India

£5 mn can buy permanent UK residency for wanted crooks. No wonder arms dealer Sudhir Choudhrie, defaulter Vijay Mallya and scamster Lalit Modi live honourably in London.

- Bhavna Vij-Aurora

Around the time in 2013 when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) put arms dealer Sudhir Choudhrie on the list of “undesirable contact men”, Theresa May, then the UK’s home secretary and now its prime minister, presented him with an Asian Business award for lifetime achievement. The suave businessman was blacklisted by the CBI as he was suspected of manipulating government contracts, and ministers and bureaucrats were expected to take extra care while dealing with him. Choudhrie was being investigated for his role in the contracts to upgrade 130 mm field-guns and the Barak missile deal in 2006. Even while the probe was on, Choudhrie moved to London and soon acquired British citizenship.

The billionaire arms dealer is now known to be a philanthropist, and almost got elected to the House of Lords as a long-time supporter of the Liberal Democrats. Now, the UK’s Serious Frauds Office (SFO) has found that companies linked to Choudhrie and his son Bhanu may have been paid bribes by some defence companies, including Rolls Royce and MiG, for contracts.

Will it embarrass the UK? Not likely. The SFO probe was on since 2014, when the father -son duo were detained and bailed out unconditionally. Despite that Choudhrie flourished, living a life of luxury in the heart of London’s Belgravia, where he and his family own a number of mansions.

Choudhrie typifies hundreds of others like him, who have found a safe haven in the UK, fleeing the the law in India. The CBI had to close investigations against him after the UK did not respond to letters rogatory (LR's) sent by them. The investigative agencies claim that they see this pattern in most of the cases and want the matter to be taken up by the government at the diplomatic level.