Mumbai: The Enforcement Directorate of India (ED) has filed a charge sheet against fugitive jeweller Mehul Choksi, elaborating how he allegedly ran an organised racket to cheat customers and lenders in India, Dubai and the US, including top financial institutions, by dealing in “lab grown diamonds” and selling off properties, details accessed by Hindustan Times reveal.

The charge sheet is aimed at bolstering India’s extradition request for Choksi to Antigua and Barbuda sent under the UN Conventions against Corruption in March 2019. An official said on condition of anonymity that the charge sheet was filed a “few weeks back”. He, however, did not give a specific date.

Choksi, a key accused in the Rs 13,500-crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case along with his nephew Nirav Modi, became a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda under a programme in which a certain quantum of investment entitles an individual to citizenship. While investigators say Choksi fled the country to avoid arrest, he claims he left India in January 2018 to undergo a bypass surgery, and not to avoid prosecution. ED previously filed a charge sheet in 2018 to underline the role of Choksi and others in the PNB fraud case.

The new charge sheet, relying on statements of several top executives of companies based in the US, UAE, Hong Kong and India, reveals how “lab grown diamonds” were being sold in the garb of natural diamonds through Choksi’s companies M/s Shanyo Gong Si Ltd in Hong Kong and M/s Voyager Brands and M/s Samuels Jewelers Inc in the US. The factory for lab-grown diamonds was run in Surat, where large-scale production took place, personally monitored by Choksi, the charge sheet says. These diamonds appear similar in size, quality and colour when compared to natural diamonds, it adds.