NEW DELHI: Ten people, including liquor baron Vijay Mallya and diamond merchant Nirav Modi, have been declared as fugitive economic offenders by courts since 2018, Rajya Sabha was informed on Tuesday.
The Fugitive Economic Offenders Act (FEOA) was enacted by the Narendra Modi government in 2018 to crackdown on those who are charged with high-value economic frauds and abscond from the country to evade the law.
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.
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. The amount of “fraud involved in these cases is more than Rs 40,000 crore,” Chaudhary said.