10 People Declared Fugitive Economic Offenders Since 2018: Govt

Ten people, including liquor baron Vijay Mallya and diamond merchant Nirav Modi, have been declared fugitive economic offenders by courts since 2018, Rajya Sabha was informed on Tuesday.
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The Fugitive Economic Offenders Act (FEOA) was enacted by the Narendra Modi government in 2018 to crack down on those who are charged with high-value economic fraud 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.
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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.
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The amount of "fraud involved in these cases is more than Rs 40,000 crore," Chaudhary said.?
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As of 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.?
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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.
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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.
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In a related development, the ED had stated 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.
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The federal agency identified the two as Sudarshan Venkatraman and Ramanujam Sesharathnam, the erstwhile promoter directors of Zylog Systems Limited.