CBI gaffe led govt to misquote number of economic fugitives

Owing to a CBI blooper, the government quoted a wrong figure in Parliament on Wednesday when it claimed that 31 businessmen had fled the country after committing economic frauds.

Replying to a question in Lok Sabha, the ministry of external affairs had given names of 31 persons, who had settled abroad, including Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi, Jatin Mehta, Sanjay Bhandari among others and who are wanted by the Central Bureau of Investigation or the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

The MEA also named Kolkata-based jeweller, Nilesh Parrekh, who cheated a consortium of 25 banks led by SBI of Rs 2,223 crore, as one of the businessmen “absconding abroad”. However, it turns out that Nilesh Parrekh was arrested by CBI on May 8, 2017 at Mumbai airport when he returned from Dubai. The central premier agency furnished wrong information in Parliament as Parrekh is still in India and is out on bail.


CBI had registered a case against Nilesh Parrekh and his company Shri Ganesh Jewellery House in July 2016 after it was found that he had diverted money taken from banks to Hong Kong, Singapore and the UAE. CBI is learnt to have again written to MEA accepting the gaffe and correcting the names in the ‘absconding abroad’ list.