INDIA'S $1.8m FRAUDSTER AND ITS MOST WANTED MAN, MEHUL CHOKSI, WILL HAVE HIS EXTRADITION HEARING IN BELGIUM ON MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15

Next week, the Government of India will have an opportunity to finally move the extradition case against MEHUL CHOKSI, who defrauded PUNJAB NATIONAL BANK, and others, of the equivalent of nearly two million Dollars. Choksi, whose extradition hearing commences next Monday, may end up in the dock in India after all. He was successful in cheating justice for close to a decade, by securing a Citizenship by Investment (CIP) passport in Antigua & Barbuda (which shows you that Antigua's due diligence is a bad joke played on the world's compliance officers) and delaying his case their through the country's corruption-ridden judicial system.

In essence, Choksi bought years of delay in that proceeding through bribes paid to local government officials, assisted by prominent ( but well connected) sleazy Antiguan attorneys, but it seems that he may now have to face the music at home. What his presumed extradition will do to his pending civil suit against India, and its agents, for an alleged failed kidnapping plot, we cannot say. Was Choksi actually attempting to escape to non-extraditable Cuba when he ran afoul of what he says was a government-sponsored operation to Shanghai him?

Truth is often stranger than fiction, and perhaps we may never know what really happened in Antigua, but if the Government of India prevails in Belgium, that argument will quickly lose its audience, as what will be an interesting trial will distract the public in India. Let the show begin.