Mehul Choksi goes missing in Antigua, may have fled to Cuba

FUGITIVE Indian diamantaire Mehul Choksi has gone missing from his Antigua home, where he has been staying since January 2018, his lawyer and the Royal Police Force of the Caribbean island nation confirmed on Tuesday (25).

The 62-year-old is wanted by the Central Bureau Of Investigation (CBI), India, and the Enforcement Directorate in connection with £1.3 billion loan fraud and money-laundering cases.

Choksi, who is fighting extradition to India, apparently left home to have dinner at a restaurant on the southern side of the island on Sunday (23) and has not been seen since. His car was soon found abandoned with no signs of him.

“Police in Antigua have started search operations for him. The family is worried about his safety. We are keeping a watch on developments," Choksi’s lawyer Vijay Aggarwal said.

A missing case was filed at the Johnson Point Police Station in Antigua after which the police launched a manhunt to track him down. According to the country’s prime minister of Antigua, Gaston Browne, the government authorities are trying to trace Choksi and citizens have been asked to inform police if they have any information.

Meanwhile, it is being claimed that Choksi may have fled to Cuba. 

“Mehul Choksi has left the country and most probably is currently residing in his other luxurious home in Cuba,” a local media quoted his associate as saying. 

Another local report claimed that Choksi has citizenship of another Caribbean country and might have left Antigua as the Indian government was mounting pressure on Antiguan authorities to revoke his citizenship.

Choksi, along with his nephew Nirav Modi, is wanted for allegedly siphoning £1.3 billion of public money from the state-run Punjab National Bank (PNB) using letters of undertaking. While Modi is in a London prison after being repeatedly denied bail and is contesting his extradition to India, Choksi took citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda in 2017 using the Citizenship by Investment program before fleeing India in the first week of January 2018 and had been living there since then.