LONDON: Priti Patel, the British Indian minister who signed off on Nirav Modi's extradition order to India as home secretary in April 2021 after a prima facie case was established in court, has said she is "appalled and horrified" that he is still in the UK.
Patel, shadow foreign secretary on the Conservative Opposition benches, told 'The Daily Telegraph' podcast in an episode to be released next week that the Indian authorities were "hugely angry" over Britain's failure to extradite the jeweller wanted for one of the country's biggest banking frauds.
'The Diamond King' four-part podcast series traces the newspaper's discovery of the fugitive diamond merchant hiding out in a luxury London flat leading to his eventual arrest by Scotland Yard in March 2019.
"If our system were judicious and doing the right thing, rather than tying itself up in process and excuses, he should not be in this country," Patel is quoted as saying.
"I'm actually pretty appalled and horrified that he's still here, and I have to say, I suspect that really makes the India government feel quite demoralised about even working with us," she said.
The 55-year-old jeweller remains in a London prison in connection with a USD 2 billion Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud and money laundering case.
He exhausted his legal options in the UK and reportedly has also lost a last-ditch plea at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in France, with his extradition seen as imminent.
Patel said that as home secretary, during the Tory-led government between 2019 and 2022, the case complicated matters for her as India "would really push back" on taking visa overstayers.
"I had a hell of a challenge getting them [India] to sign off on receiving failed asylum seekers and I'm convinced it's because we had this high-profile case [of Nirav Modi] and we had another high-profile case at the time and until they [India] saw action and movement on those, guess what, they had some leverage over us, which was terribly frustrating," she said.
Nirav Modi is wanted in connection with three sets of criminal proceedings in India, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case of PNB fraud, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) case relating to the alleged laundering of the proceeds of that fraud and a third set of criminal proceedings involving alleged interference with evidence and witnesses in the CBI proceedings.
"[Nirav] Modi should be in prison in India and serving his time there, having gone through a legal process, which is exactly what UK extradition laws and treaties are about," Patel told the newspaper.
"It's a flagrant abuse of our system. I mean, that's the only way to describe this. It really is. And you know, it's an insult to British taxpayers as well," she said.
The delays to Nirav Modi's extradition involved several High Court appeals on human rights grounds as well as a parallel, confidential political asylum claim.
It was after the reported denial of asylum that the jeweller, lodged at Pentonville prison in north London, attempted to reopen his extradition case which was also turned down by the High Court in England in March this year.