While Indian investigative agencies, the CBI, the ED, and the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), were apparently paralysed in their pursuit of Jatin Mehta, tangled in technicalities and political inertia, the battle for legal and financial accountability shifted thousands of miles away to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. This shift was largely driven by the aggressive pursuit of international liquidators and consortium banks attempting to claw back the stolen assets through civil litigation.
The detailed, day-to-day progression of this litigation has been tracked by reports in MoneyControl, Hindustan Times, and Newsclick, narrating how, nearly a decade after the Winsome default was perpetrated in India, the Mehta family finally found themselves cornered in a London courtroom.
Worldwide Freezing Order (WFO)
In May 2022, acting on behalf of Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) and the accountancy firm Grant Thornton, the High Court in London imposed a worldwide freezing order (WFO) against Jatin Mehta, his wife Sonia, and their sons Vishal and Suraj. The judicial order froze assets globally up to the value of $932.5 million, citing the overwhelming forensic evidence that the family had misappropriated $1 billion in bullion loan facilities and systematically laundered the proceeds through shell companies in England and other jurisdictions.
These reports highlighted the legal manoeuvres undertaken by the Mehtas to escape a judicial dragnet. On October 8, 2022, Danish Khan reported in the Hindustan Times that the Mehtas attempted to be discharged from the WFO, arguing that they were themselves victims of the banks, not the perpetrators of the fraud. They filed a host of applications seeking to strike out the action, claiming that the dispute was fundamentally an Indian domestic matter and that the UK was an inappropriate forum for the trial.
In November 2022, and confirmed again in a ruling in February 2023 by Justice Edwin Johnson, the High Court in London firmly and unequivocally rejected the Mehtas’ plea to discharge the freeze order. The court systematically dismantled the argument that this was an exclusive Indian dispute. Justice Johnson ruled that the claimants in the London case were not merely Indian banks, but England-registered companies that had been utilised by the Mehtas as “conduits for the passing of the funds through layers of companies” to launder the proceeds of the fraud.
The UK court noted the reality of the defendants’ physical geography: the Mehtas were all currently residing in or operating through England, the UAE, and St Kitts & Nevis in the Caribbean, and had deliberately kept themselves away from India precisely to evade the jurisdiction of Indian law enforcement. This ruling effectively cornered the family, bringing them a step closer to facing a civil trial for fraud in the UK.
The most consequential legal actions against an economic fugitive, who stole taxpayers’ money from Indian public sector banks, are being pursued by British liquidators in London courts, while the Indian government remains paralyzed because of what Opposition figures and independent journalists contend is an enforced political inertia because of the Adani family’s connections.
(Ayush Joshi, Abir Dasgupta and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta are independent journalists)
