Grubstakers - Episode 97: Nirav Modi (Former Billionaire Diamonaire Fugitive)

Episode Date: September 10, 2019

New episode on former billionaire diamonaire fugitive Nirav Modi diamond heir legacy child, Wharton college dropout, and as always, a billionaire with a brother who does him no good. Learn all about how he defrauded the Punjab National Bank of an alleged 1.8 Billion Dollars. The amount varies depending on the source, because they don’t know how much this Modi family has defrauded the banks of India. Whilst this fraud he was also selling fake diamonds to manufactures around the world as well as close friends, and including Canadian Paul Alfonso who has a lawsuit out for Nirav due to his fiancé leaving him because of being duped for two hundred thousand dollars. All that and more right here on Grubstakers.

I want to be held accountable for what I'm doing. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it was like the 9-11 of my career and certainly of making kombucha. Jesus is smart. This idea of income inequality, it always strikes me as a very, it's a deceptive term, income inequality. Well, let's flip it around. It comes from outcome inequality. Are you ready?

Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco. You gotta go backwards. En cinco, cuatro, tres, dos, uno. Hey everyone, welcome. In synchro. I got the loose, Steve! Dose. Uno. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Grubstakers. My name's Yogi Paul, and I'm joined by my wonderful co-hosts. Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffers. Sean P. McCarthy.

Today, we are going to be talking about international billionaire fraudster Nirav Modi. This is an Indian diamondaire, which, by the way, that word, terrible. Diamond plus N-A-I-R-E. That's not, that's a horseshit word. Diamond magnate. I think that's better. Nirav Modi is involved in a multi-billion dollar bank fraud scam, and we will be getting to exactly how he pulled it all off.

I like how the only way you could be worse than being a legitimate diamond man would be a diamond man plus a fraudster. Like the business model is terrifying enough. Right, right. Yeah, before we recorded, Sean was like, hey, is this guy linked to like blood diamonds at all? And I'm like, well, he might be, but that wouldn't be the worst thing this guy does. So to open with the bio of Nirav Modi, he was born in Gujarat, India, and he spent his time in Antwerp, Belgium, and that's where he split his time growing up. And his dad's a diamondaire, as well as his grandfather.

So, really humble roots for how this guy became a billionaire with his diamond lineage in his family. Yeah, a lot of the competitors in belgium were removed in the 1940s so his grandfather was a diamond trader and an early settler in singapore and his dad deepak shifted base to antwerp belgium where nerov spent his childhood um there's not much information about Nirov's upbringing when it comes to how he grew up and stuff. He does have three siblings. One brother who we'll mention later because he ruined

the family scheme. Like Naval Ravikant, Nirov has a brother that ruins everything that he did. Shout out to Fail Brothers. Oh, it says he's a follower of the Jainist religion. Yeah, he might be Jain. Yeah, that could be the case. You guys know that about that one no i don't is that the religion from uh where you believe in the villain from golden eye it's the one where you you can't even like all they abhor

all violence including like even to flies like the more well the more orthodox janes will like wear masks so that they don't like accidentally breathe in a fly and kill it or something didn't a lot of them die out just because of the kind of contradiction of no violence and they would kind of starve to death because you have to kill something to eat even if it's a plant yeah i think they're like they are vegans yeah the jainism is very anti uh damage um in all aspects and so i believe they are vegetarians and vegans and um i mean you know you got to think though like andy's mentioning those type of orthodox religions are so tempted by people next to them you know swatting flies in this case um what cast is he from uh on all of the dating gossip websites you

can find about him and his family you can't find what cast they are but they some of them said he was hindu so they got that part wrong because if he's jane he's i mean he might be hindustani nationalistically but he's not that as a religion i guess we should mention before we go into the bio he's we believe a former billionaire like i guess we should explain, before we go into the bio, he's, we believe, a former billionaire. Like, I guess we should explain to people, this is an Indian billionaire who's caught up in a major scandal over there. Yeah, and I think one thing I want to mention to our audience before we get into the entirety of this episode is that... What if he's in the Church of Jay-Z night? A cult based out of Yelm, Washington that Salma Hayek is a member of? Oh, really?

Yeah. I was going to say, the Janus religion, you have to get a tattoo of a mask smiling and a mask frowning. Wait, Salma Hayek is a part of a cult from Washington? Man, I didn't know that. They're led by this woman, Jaycee Knight,

who claims to have... Isn't that just black Jaycee? Who claims to have a spiritual connection with a 10,000-year-old warrior named Ramtha. And at cult meetings, she'll come out as Ramtha, quote-unquote channeling him, and speak as Ramtha. Man, how big of an advantage does your cult have if you have Selma Hayek in it? Like you have like at least 100,000 people willing to just nod along to whatever you say. Oh, yeah. If they can go to a meeting and look at Selma Hayek.

Yeah, I mean, it is a sad reality that cults are mostly, I need people to be yes men. And if you got gorgeous women around you at all times, you'll get a lot of yes men. Selma Hayek is just like, yes, the earth is 10,000 years old. And everybody's just nodding and not hearing a word she says well I knew someone who went to a kindergarten that was run by this cult and she said that one thing they had them do was

they would write on a piece of paper things that they wanted and the teachers would spread them out in a field and they would then put blindfolds on the kids and they had to go find the paper with the things that they want on it really that was their kindergarten tragically this took place in a uh decommissioned world war one minefield

bet to nirav modi the billionaire fraudster one thing i want to mention before we get into this whole thing is that the defrauding that nirav did there's a good chance every rich pure person in india is of involved in some sort of corruption like this. Because the level of corruption going on in India is... That's racist. I mean, yeah, I'm saying it as it is, Sandy. Nirav has a brother, Nishal, who's married to one of the Ambani's granddaughters, and then their uncle, Mukesh Choksi, is also referenced in Narendra Modi's speeches often as well.

So the level of just incestuous, hey, we're a part of the money group in this country is just fucking nonsense. But yeah, just for those who don't listen to every episode of this podcast, we did an episode on Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India, who spent $100 million on his daughter's wedding.

And it was just something where he like you go through it and it's like he built his fortune entirely through corruption and government connections he spent the budget of venom on his daughter's wedding by the way that's a wedding you want to go to just so that you can steal from it yeah oh yeah you know it is kind of fucked up like so he spends a hundred million and then all the videos of the wedding are just like cell phone camera videos like how the fuck does isis have better production values than your hundred million dollar wedding he forgot to uh grease the wheels of the local union local teamsters union so near of modi uh he grows up in bel in Belgium and splits time in India and then he eventually goes to college in Wharton

and this is where he will meet Ami Modi who becomes his wife eventually but at Wharton he wants to be a music conductor but that doesn't work out and he studies finance for a year until he drops out to the dismay of his parents according to this churmuri.blanc

and then at age 19 I'm half Belgian half Indian drops out to the dismay of his parents, according to this. Churmuri.blanc. And then at age 19... I'm half Belgian, half Indian, so that means I get my chopped off African child limbs from 7-Eleven. If you don't know Dan Ninen, millennial comedian, you gotta check him out. He's one of the best.

At age 19, he was sent to Bombay, now known as Mumbai to cut his teeth under his uncle Mahul Kachoksi Mahul Kachoksi of Gitanjali Diamonds where he reportedly worked 12 hours a day 6 and a half days a week for

3,500 rupees which is I don't know about like 70 dollars roughly I'm half Belgian half Indian that means that I'm not allowed to have chocolate because my cast is too low. You guys know Dan Knighton at all? Yeah, of course. Hey, do you see him?

He's like a running joke on Comptown Chapo. Corporate comedian? I opened for him once. Really? Yeah, I had a great set. And he was like, you killed. So I've emailed him to be on our show a couple of times. And he is open to it. Really? I had a great set, and he was like, you killed. So I've emailed him to be on our show a couple of times, and he is open to it.

Really? We might get Dan Knight in on the show. I remember he had a Facebook fight with one of our friends, and I just kept on complimenting him and then asking him if he needed a feature. I wish that Yogi story went like, yeah, so I emailed him once, and now at 3 a.m. he sends me seven-page letters about how he's flying on a private jet and getting into a Tesla

while I'm a loser. Yeah, that's what he does when someone pisses him off. A friend of ours, he just got pissed off, and so he was sending selfies of himself in a private jet and in front of a Tesla as a way of owning him yeah he'll he'll call you up at 3am he's like i only accept petro dollars well like the first thing that really got him on the national uh comedy controversy scene was that he was going to offer mark maron ten thousand dollars to be on the wtf podcast and maron was

like uh no i don't want to do this. But he wouldn't reveal that Dan Ninen was the name. And then Marc Marin came to headline a club that we all lived at near in Seattle, Washington. And I remember being up there like, hey, so that guy that offered you $10,000, he was like, Dan Ninen's his name. Like, he just knew instantly that that's the question I was going for. So Nirav Modi is in Mumbai, and he's working six and a half days a week as a diamond cutter. And ten years after this, he puts together some money.

I mean, essentially, this guy's working every day, but he's got family money to support him in all of his future endeavors. And so ten years later, he's in 1999. I do just want to stop you for a minute. We should note, like, I only know a little bit about this, but like diamond cutting, if he's actually doing it, it is a very precise skill. Because you take these raw stones and you have to cut them. I guess now with machinery, it's easier. But back when people like did it by hand, you know, you have to you take these raw stones and you have to make very precise cuts to make, you know. Actually, it's like it's like one of those really manual disciplines where the humans are

still better than machines a lot of times you kind of have to line it up with the actual lattice structure of the diamond in order for the light to pass through um ideally yeah like the lattice structure of the carbon atoms uh within the diamond see the real experts can maintain a total silence in their heads that shuts out all of the cries of the children in the congo who actually brought the stone to them all of the spirits of the children from the mines are just like you have to ignore all that and like you know the operators of machine aren't gonna be able to do that so they're gonna fuck it up you know as much as that is true uh in in this article that i'm quoting from it does mention that Nirov can't draw and explains

so years later after he set up his first company, Fire Start in 1999, which is Fire Star Diamond, which at the time was valued at 2.3 billion, ranked number 57 in Forbes list of Indian billionaires in 2017.

He does say that Nirov can't draw and explains his designs to craft persons, quoting, I travel a lot. I get inspired and I give a narrative and emotion to my designers who sketch. Then the engineers figure out how to make it. So basically he has other people doing all of this shit. Right, exactly.

So as much as... You know what, though? I do got to respect the balls on that. Just like the most dressed up way of saying, I do none of the work here. I just like the most dressed up way of saying i do none of the work here right i just describe what i want this to look like idea man make it shiny the fucking steve jobs of diamond right right so as much as i think that he might have gotten better at becoming a diamond cutter i think that that entire time was just spent learning the ropes

of how to you know make your own diamond empire from his uncle because you know at that point at this time he's a college dropout he's 19 years old and went to the wharton school of business and his family's just like all right you're gonna work with your uncle fuck you i mean it's the ultimate nepotistic oh your uncle owns something so he's gonna fucking give you a job you piece of shit it's sort of funny like i mean i guess another thing i've learned from this podcast is like if you go to the wharton school of business you automatically have the network set up you need to do some sort of business fraud because like you want to do insider trading all right they're all at the wharton school you want to do a pump and dump like you can find people in the wharton school to go in with you right right

so um oh and one other thing i don't know if you mentioned this earlier but i saw on wikipedia he's like his family is like multi multi-generation uh diamond cutters in india yeah do you know about how far back that goes well so it's reported that it was just his grandfather is the beginning of the diamond empire and i don't think it goes much more further past that because he mentions in uh an interview that his grandfather started it and his dad who's now in his 70s is still doing it so there's a chance that it might be going past that you know 110 year uh i mean it might be 130 year legacy of diamond cutting potentially if not longer so like turn of the century 19th 20th century around when they started? Yeah, I think that the main thing I want...

Colonial era. Yeah, exactly. I think that because he was in Singapore and not India, I think that his grandfather must have started that diamond company with some malicious intent, if you know what I mean.

But Singapore was a British colony too, right? Or am I mistaken? No, you're right about that. But actually, I don't know if it is. That's a decent question. I wish i knew the answer to the the thing to like about how people got power back then is um when the british were first colonizing the area um the way to really gain a lot of power was to just give the best sloppiest blow job to a colonial general and you know you had to hope that you really knew how to suck that down um really like you know suppress the gag reflex back of the throat

and uh if you could make him come twice you know you were set well that's what the modis do they make sure to make you come twice that's's how you found your house, pretty much. I was going to say that his grandfather made his fortune when he discovered that he could make the Raj the perfect cup of Earl Grey tea. All right, so he starts his first company in 1999, and he's a designated partner in four enterprises. Nishal Enterprises LLP Paragon, which is the name of his brother, Jewelry LLP Paragon Merchandising, and Panchajanya Diamonds LLP. So, it's all family businesses. These are LLCs that are

dummy corporations that we now know because of this fraud, set up in the names of their siblings and family members. Oh, and just Singapore was a British colony. They set one up 1819, and then it was occupied by the Japanese during World War II, and then returned to the British, and then got its independence in the 1960s. Gotcha.

So, the beginning of Nirov's legacy is that he begins selling parcels of polished diamonds and then sorting them. But his best thing was how he was sourcing the diamonds. He started off by buying diamond ruffs from De Beers, but then quickly switched to Alla Rosa of Russia and then Australian miner Argyle. So those three individuals,

I bet you could find some blood diamond ties to them. De Beers? No. I'm just imagining his eureka moment in the bathtub where he's like what if we made it even crueler what if we cut off both hands that's the genius moment that's the you know we've been cutting off one hand but what if we just cut off both arms it's like a montage and music is playing and equations are going above his head. He's like, no, not cut off one hand, cut off two hands, and then they will work twice as fast.

He's having a meeting with a geologist where he's like, I'm telling you, man, this mine will just churn out diamond after diamond. And he's like, okay, but are there any child soldier militias in the area? Nope, pass. Pass. We need employees. Now, wait a minute. We've been using 12-year-olds. What if we use nine-year-olds?

We can, in fact, the 12-year-olds are attempting to unionize and we can use nine-year-olds as scabs to break the strike. So he's buying these diamonds from people, doing a pretty okay job. He's the first Indian jewelry designer to be on the cover of Christie's catalog,

which is famous for his Embrace Bangle. He made a stretchable... I think a lot of British soldiers did that too. The bangle called the Embrace Bangle is made of 800 different parts and it's a stretchable bracelet. So you could... It's like a Chinese finger trap,

but a bracelet. That's exactly what it looks like. I'm imagining like a Mobius strip of child exploitation. And then he also did the Endless Band, an unbroken line of diamonds set in an almost invisible 18k white gold band so his pieces cost from five locked rupees to 50 crore and we're going to get into that breakdown

for a second because the indian money isn't on uh the same uh denomination as the u.s currency how many adam crores is that a lock is a hundred thousand and a coror is 10 million yeah uh coror comes from the sanskrit koti and procket crodi it is also pronounced coror corrode cody cody etc in various languages the word and is also spread to arabic persian and pashto it's really offensive how when you buy one of those for corollas it lectures you on how women aren't funny. Hey man, I need Mangria because I can't drink a drink called Sangria without the word man in it. I wish I could drive my Corolla

by that homeless encampment in LA without it talking about how he hopes they all die soon. So we're going to mention Corolla a lot later when we talk about his fraud, but to let everyone in the audience listening, it's 10 million rupees is what a Karor is. He's reported to have strategically... People are taking out their calculators at their desks as we speak. They're like, well, can you slow down?

We want to follow all these rupees, Karors. This is why we listen to this shit. We're going to start reporting all of our financial statement in lock and crore. Yeah, please. If we are at a point where we're making lock or crore money, I think we should. This would be like.00001 crore of RS crore. I'm just imagining Andy starts handling money for the podcast and then dooms himself to be a lower cast forever so it's about 2009 and nerov is apparently he's reported to have strategically picked up rare

diamonds at bargain prices during the slowdown in 2009 so due to the recession he banks a whole bunch of diamonds and we're almost to the part where the fraud that is revealed recently. The slowdown coinciding with a UN investigation into conditions in diamond mines. And the rare rubies he finds, one of the first ones to be profiled is a 12.29 carat diamond from the famous Golconda mines, which was fashioned into a necklace called the Golconda Lotus. Went under the hammer at Christie's auction in Hong Kong in 2010 for $3.6 million, which is $16 crore for anyone paying attention. I'm sorry. I know you probably said it, but just for me, I'm slow.

So he drops out of Wharton School of Business, and he goes back to India. He's in Gujarat, or where is he? He's in Bombay, now known as Mumbai. Mumbai, yes. So he's in Mumbai now, and he's doing this business. He sets up his own diamond shop out of Mumbai. So he's in Mumbai now and he's doing this business. He sets up his own diamond shop. So he's in Mumbai when he's spending the first 10 years cutting the diamonds but at

this point he's all over the world. Right. He's a jet setter. Because as a diamondaire that's such a shitty word. It's worse than equestrian because equestrian... Diamondback? Yeah. Equestrian you're like, I don't know, it sounds like it could be agriculture but diamondaire is just like ugh. It's's just gross i do like that diamond air rhymes with nightmare which is

what he is for anyone under the age of 15 on the african continent so after he does this uh uh necklace yeah sorry just one other thing so like by 2009 he's clearly like multi-millionaire if not billionaire and then like so probably by the early 2000s he's made a fortune or when would you put that um so the hong kong necklace sells in 2010 for 3.6 million so i would bet that he has a couple hundred million at this point at his disposal for the diamond uh business but even that number is going to come into question in a moment when we start talking about the fraud itself, because the fraud that he does is reported to have happened between 2011 and 2015. And we'll get more on that in a moment. But before we get there, I want to talk about why he was so regarded as such a high profile person. Because of the Hong Kong necklace

that he sold, he starts outfitting Hollywood with diamond and jewelry. He gets Kate Winslet, Taraji P. Henson, Lisa Hayden, and the Indian goddess who I hate personally, Priyanka Chopra is featured. If you go to his website, she's wearing the Mogok Ruby Suite 27 ravishing rubies from the Mogok mines in Myanmar that required two years of sourcing to finally craft into an exquisite necklace so it is pretty sad how kate winslet keeps needing a fresh free supply of diamonds because she keeps throwing them in the ocean i was gonna say that that

necklace is the perfect accessory for a hollywood celebrity lecturing you about climate change just stare at the blood diamonds on their neck while they tell you to stop flying commercial. So I want to say this up front. Even if this guy isn't committing massive billion-dollar frauds, the entire basis of his business is spending countless lives and time sourcing raw earth materials

to make jewelry for millionaire celebrities so that they can look pretty polluting a lot in the process a lot all pollution i mean it's you know his entire life is pollution and yeah and it is one of those things where it's like if you don't have a family that goes back to you know the turn of the 19th 20th century that's how he can like say like we are the elite diamond cutters and this creates the demand from hollywood millionaires and other you know assorted millionaires and billionaires or you know it's just like we can say we we have this exclusive diamond that was like cut by like this family that has this legacy that because they're such professionals you know well and i mean it's not

even about it being that it's not even about it being that, it's not even about their legacy. It's just the fact that he's got the brand name after he gets his first nut. I mean, like, you know, once you say, I got a fucking, my name in a popular magazine as an Indian diamond heir, you know, gangbusters. Everyone wants a piece of you because everyone knows that this stuff

isn't good for the world, but yet we tolerate it for no real reason i mean it's it's it's horrendous i mean also it was a dime cutter you know he or diamond cutter he uh controls the british crown keeps the metric system down leaves atlantis off the maps keeps the martians under wraps he holds back the electric car and he makes Steven Guttenberg a star What? You know, he robs Cave Fish of their site He rigs every Oscar night

I don't know what you're referencing It's a Simpsons bit Oh, really? I know the Simpsons well It's the Stonecutters Oh, okay, alright Now I feel like an idiot No, I'm pro-Chinese fake diamonds

I feel like that's a really woke thing, actually Yeah, I think that fake... Driving down the price, and thereby the need to... the impetus to torture children in mines. That's the thing with, like, cubit zirconiums, where people are, like, it's supposed to be a scandal

if someone gets one instead of a diamond, but it's like, well, you can't tell the difference. Like, what, you just want something on your finger that costs five dead children with these with these latest fakes that they're making or at least sourcing it through china uh-huh um they're so good that the the beers like experts can't tell the difference oh right yeah those aren't cubit zirconiums? Those are... I forget the exact thing. They're either extremely good cubit zirconiums

or some other method. I was going to mention this later, but I do want to say that when this scandal was starting to break out because of the fact that the Indian news media doesn't travel throughout the world nearly as well as our media does, this guy in Canada, Paul Alfonso,

who had connections to Nirav Modi, went to propose to his fiance so he went to nerof to get a ring from him and nerof was like all right i got this ring for you it's a bang it's gonna be 120 000 but it's fantastic you're gonna love it and then this guy paul's alfonso's girlfriend decided you know what i kind of want this ring from this magazine and he was like nerof can you hook me up dog he's like yeah it's gonna be be $80,000. But you know what? You should get both because you can give this one to her later. And so he gives them $200,000.

And then she gets it appraised. And it turns out, fake diamonds. Oh, these are lab-grown diamonds. Oh, okay. Oh, that's pretty neat. So I didn't know they could do that yet. The beer experts, they can't even tell the difference with these things. Yeah, because they're real diamonds. They're equally pretty.

Yeah, of course it is. They're both real. Right. It doesn't matter. It's shiny objects. Yeah, they're like, well, okay, these ones, if no children were killed to make these diamonds, aren't they better?

That makes them better to me anyway. Right. Well, that was what I was saying before we started recording is it really seems like if you're like a fake diamond fraudster your real crime is improving labor conditions and dinosaurs you're reduced you're you're infringing on the beer's ability to exploit people along their supply chain right that's the real crime right like and just for people who don't know i mean i only know the vague parts of this story but like arthur rhodes i think it was arthur rhodes the rhodes scholar guy was like a diamond magnate a british diamond magnate who created a false false scarcity of diamonds to

drive up the price and then there were all these campaigns in the united states in the the early 20th century about how get your wife a diamond ring to propose you know and it was just entirely there was a diamond cartel set up where there's like what was it the like one-fifth of your annual salary or whatever they came up with that bullshit yeah it was just a marketing gimmick but the entire point is like there's no scarcity of diamonds they're just controlled by a cartel who like keeps the prices up scarcity we don't need them right like it's not there's that part right and they're not scarce because you can grow them right exactly it's it's the entire demand for jewelry of this caliber jewelry period but jewelry in this case is fucking ridiculous i mean it'd be like

you know and people sacrifice their entire lives for this horseshit this this specific billionaire who is now not a billionaire made a billion fucking dollars off of being someone so reputable in the diamond industry that idiots like paul alfonso was like hey i'll wire you 200 000 without checking the certificates of these diamonds and then this fiance broke up with him because her family thought he was giving her fake diamonds how could you let someone fraud him and so he became depressed and then he's filing a lawsuit uh of his two companies that file for bankruptcy for a 4.2 million dollars i want to correct myself it's a cecil roads was the road scholar guys arthur roads was actually a seattle mariners player and you know you can remember it's cecil roads because if a mariners player

had tried to do it he would have failed it's funny because like i i pulled up this article from the south china morning post about these fake diamonds um and it's such clear like you know they're the information appears to be correct but it's got this extra like element of propaganda where it's like first of all lab grow diamonds are not fake they're the real deal in terms of physical and chemical composition they're the same as my diamonds these are not uh swarovski crystals in fact they're superior to quote the real thing with fewer impurities and defects experts will tell you that being 99.9 pure carbon lab grown diamonds are actually shinier and stronger like it's just an ad for lab growngrown diamonds i like when you say lab-grown

diamonds i just imagine like you like a shroom kit where you like order the spores off the internet and then hope hope your mom doesn't know it's growing in your closet like i mean do you know how they lab grow is that all accurate though i mean um well i was i was looking into the wikipedia page for manufacturing diamonds and it looks like at first they would heat carbon up. Well, how many black kids' arms are cut off for this process? That's what I need to know. 50% fewer. That's the real innovation.

It's like, okay, we only have to kill half the number of children. You just got to go out and get five wedding rings and put them in soil under a hydroponic lamp. What if they just can't accept that you don't need to kill anyone? So they have the whole lab-grown process and then right afterwards they just kill someone for no reason.

They just literally can't do it. We've discovered how to synthesize diamonds, but we're also hardcore pagans who don't want to anchor the god of diamond mining. They still have to sacrifice someone. I mean, you have to to make money. But so I guess just to get back to Yogi's story, it is interesting to me where, to the best of our knowledge,

he probably wasn't doing fraud before like oh 2010 or so i mean allegedly yeah yeah i would say the whole time but yeah i mean you know we can't prove that was being going on the whole time but the you know we'll get to the fraud in a moment the main bulk of the story here but the reality is and i'll take heed for this, I don't give a fuck, any person with this much capital in India has stolen it. Anyone. Obviously we've covered how billionaires are con men in suits, but I don't believe anyone in India that could amass this amount of wealth didn't break multiple arms to accumulate it and in the case of nirav modi being a diamond heir who has besmirched his family's name i wouldn't be shocked if this shit was going on way before that are you calling indian billionaires devious

leave your comments on the soundcloud well no i mean it is interesting where like so india had a nominally socialist government which interestingly like of course people will use that to discredit the entire idea of socialism but it was the usual state capitalism where the government ran basically the entire economy so if you had government connections you could make money through government connections and and like we certainly see a lot of this with u.s billionaires but it is just an interesting kind of i guess dynamic where you know russian billionaires are called oligarchs and you know even in the western press indian billionaires might be called out more corrupt

but uh as more as more corrupt than american but that's what's interesting you wouldn't actually see that right the indian media is so poor that this pa Alfonso fuck personally knows Nirav Modi, and the case is going on while he's wiring him $200,000, and he doesn't realize that he's being investigated for the fraud that we're about to bring up. So, you know, on one hand, yes, the racial aspect of brown billionaires being perceived as more devious than other billionaires may be the case, but the reality is... You heard it here first. Russians are brown. But the reality is that the news media of India

is not going to touch the U.S. soil in the ways that a U.S. billionaire will. I mean, there's certainly more propaganda that American billionaires are altruistically good, but if they didn't need to do that if american billionaires uh who are white or not white didn't need to you know i don't know funnel tax money through fucking philanthropic ventures or shit like that they wouldn't be nice either so the entire notion of these indian billionaires being more devious is certainly a racial component i will concede. However, there's just so much corruption in that fucking country

and this is the shit we're about to get through. So, Nirav Modi does a scheme with the Punjab National Bank that makes it so that he gets these documents called LOUs.

And LOUs... Is the Punjab National Bank, is that a state bank of the province? gets these uh documents called lous and lous just to stop you for a second is the is the punjab national bank is that a state bank of the province or is it a privately held banker so that's a state run enterprise that's the second largest one in india um the banks worth about a little under a billion dollars in net worth i was yeah um so an lou this is how he commits this scheme. And what that allows him to do is one of Nirav Modi's companies will ask Punjab National Bank for an LOU to import jewels from Hong Kong. Punjab National Bank gives the LOU in favor of, you know, like, let's say, Alibaba Bank's Hong Kong branch. Because of the LOU, Alibaba Bank will trust that the money extends to Nirav Modi's company will be paid back by the Punjab National Bank.

Now that's a fraudulent document, so that was never gonna happen. So it puts the money into a Nostro account, a kind of account held by one bank in foreign currency in another bank. And then Nirav Modi's company now has access to this money to pay for the imports. So within a stipulated period, once the imports have actually been shipped into India, Nirav Modi would have to pay back Punjab National Bank, which would then pay back the bank that got the LOU from. And we should just point out the LOU is one of the most commonly used forms of trade credit. And so like a bank the size of Punjab National Bank, which does a lot of international trade work,

it would be relatively easy to mask these transactions. So, I guess, am I understanding this as he's getting fraudulent loans? Backed by nothing? Yeah, the Punjab National Bank is essentially guaranteeing these transactions on behalf of of

NeurOp's companies. And like we've mentioned, he started a whole bunch of companies with you know dummy ceos as in his brother and his wife and his other family members and so some of the names of these companies are uh solar exports seller diamonds and my personal favorite diamonds are us well it's interesting wait here this is a tangent um you guys asked how diamonds are synthesized and one of the ways oh did we you listeners listeners might have been wondering why andy was silent for the last five minutes one of the ways is just um blowing up carbon in a metal chamber really and that just creates enough pressure to turn the carbon that was used to

explode into a diamond sounds Sounds pretty carbon intensive. Yeah. Well, they're apparently nanodiamonds. They're tiny diamond particles. Doesn't Elizabeth Holmes sell those? Nanodiamond. Nanodiamond. There we go. The information I'm getting at this point is from this

scroll.in article that covers the entire Nirav Modi scam here. I did just want to mention, so it's not exactly identical, but it's kind of similar to the Jho Low scam, where essentially they would take out these giant lines of credit and say the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund in the Malaysian state guarantees all this, and then he would just funnel billions into his own bank account. And, um, I guess it is kind of interesting. Steve was saying before we started recording how,

uh, we've been, uh, incidentally, uh, demolishing socialist arguments for sovereign wealth funds for the last week or two. You know,

like we've had probably four episodes that touch on sovereign wealth funds involved in corrupt scandals. Right. I mean, well, this is a commercial bank, so it's a bit different. But it's a state-run commercial bank. I think it just, like, the right-wing opponents of, like, publicly-owned corporations like this will say, see, this is why it should be privately controlled.

Right. So it would be either more efficient or more um uh what's the word um transparent but like at least in i mean at least in theory a public corporation at least on paper could be more transparent and subjected to rule by the people yeah if this was privately owned we wouldn't even know these scandals were going on. But it's just like, once those calls come out, it'll be like, this is odd and transparent. You know what we should do?

We should implement a system that's known to be even less transparent. Well, just minor digression. Like, it is interesting where one of the better, let's say most convincing arguments I've heard for how we actually implement socialism, workers control the means of production, is Matt brunig has written about nickel and dime socialism which is essentially the idea that all privately held capital or almost all of it gets put into

sovereign wealth funds that are you know public and accountable to the people and you know of course like i think it's preferable to the system we have now, but we should acknowledge there are problems with that, such as what we've talked about with some of these sovereign wealth fund corruption scandals. Well, I think part of the corruption angle with any privately or publicly controlled commercial bank or sovereign wealth fund is the fact that you need to guarantee a return

in order to some constituents that can include, well, hopefully, ideally like the indian public or the malaysian public or whoever but also to shareholders like private shareholders and there's like a lot of like these are these are monetarily sovereign states that we're dealing with this is a bit of digression i hope that's okay that's interesting um where like okay if you have a congress or a parliament and you have a floating fiat uh exchange rate regime right rather than go through the like this almost rude goldberg device of like well first we make this money this sovereign wealth fund that guarantees a certain return for its citizenships for for its citizens. And then from those accumulated capital gains, they will then be guaranteed a source of income.

Or you could just cut through all of that and say the Congress will appropriate a UBI or federally guarantee a job. So you can have the income transfer through a very simple process, or you can go through a very circuitous route that basically says the state is going to be a hedge fund manager. Right. So we're going to, and that also opens the door to needing to find private equity and hedge fund people to run these things.

Yeah, that makes sense. So like needing to, like with the Malaysian Wealth Fund, they relied on Goldman Sachs to underwrite their debt issuances. And that opened the door to that conspiracy with Jho Low. Right. Yeah, we didn't mention, but update on the Jho Low episode is that Malaysia has charged several Goldman Sachs executives with, like, fraud. And, you know, they'll probably never get prosecuted because they have to go to Malaysia. Sure, sure. But it is something where, like, Goldman Sachs absolutely helped Jho Low defraud the Malaysian people because they get, you know, tidy little fees for doing so. Yeah. But anyway, sorry to interrupt.

No, you're fine. It is interesting because, you know, I sometimes look at some of these things with, like, how it implicates the future processes of this stuff. And I do think Steven, you are right that it would change more state run things to private in India because of incidents like this, where they would be like, Oh, fuck this state run. I mean,

that's definitely going to be a political argument that you hear in India. I'm sure they say like, this is, you know, this would never happened if it was a privately owned corporation that's dominated by the need for profits. And so you can find ways to constrain that, which isn't really even the case

because all Nirav Modi did was bend the arms of two individuals. Two people were why he was able to funnel this multi-billion dollar scheme. Yeah, like the whole thing kind of set off in Mumbai when a guy named Gokulnav Shetty, a deputy branch manager and one of his subordinates, this is off a Financial Times article, when they allegedly provided unapproved,

fraudulently issued bank guarantees to Mr. Modi's firms. And Choksi, and Mr. Choksi's Gitanjali Gyms, that company, one of India's largest mass market jewelry retailers.

So this is his, Nirav Modi's uncle's businesses. Yeah, yeah. So this is all according... Uncle's. Uncle's. We all get a chance to mispronounce things

on this episode. Yeah, so this is according to a complaint by the PNB to the Central Bureau of Investigation, the CIB. Right. Which is like the FBI. Yeah, FBI, CIA, similar organization, yeah.

So the way that he pulled off this scheme is these two junior level branch officials would send the instructions to the foreign branches of other banks that Punjab National Bank had issued those LOUs on behalf of these companies. Now, the way they did this is that the software for these banks is this system called SWIFT, which is Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. And it's a system that's trusted everywhere.

These two employees would log these LOUs not through SWIFT. So that was how they got away with doing this. They kept it off the books basically so now here's the thing the way the bank figured this out is uh and this is where his brother comes in uh nirav modi's brother uh nihal shows up to the bank going but i boop boop boop boop boop gotta pull out for scam and the two employees that were pulling off a scam one of them had retired so it was a new staff that was there so he goes shows up and goes all right let me get that lou and they're like okay show us the

110 cash margin since that's yeah in order to have this trading account for trade credit you have to maintain a cash margin of like at least 100 of whatever you're trying to transact and so the you know they had a bank with no built-in credit allowances, so the companies told the branch they had been availing LOUs without providing cash margins for several years now, which is when they're like, oh, what? So this was in 2017 where the bank figured out, oh, this is actually what's going on. But the reality is that this guy, Hari Prasad, was a whistleblower. And this man in 2012 – He was a whistleblower who said The Simpsons was racist. How can you not see that this is bad?

Oh, you're going to kill Apu off the show? That wasn't my intent. Fucking snake. Like, what tripped him up was they accidentally came across, like, an honest banker. Right, right. And I mean, like, you know, had Nirav Modi gotten to this person... And actually, the only reason this guy decided to call him out was because this guy, Hari's Bank, loaned Nirav Modi's company 10 crore with a payback of 25 crore. And when that didn't happen... I'm just imagining how fucking mad he would have been like, what are the odds that we find an honest banker?

Like, statistically, it's more likely you'll win the lottery or be attacked by a great white shark and walk into a bank and find a guy on the up and up so harry persaud whistle blows and the first thing he because his bank has loaned nirav modi's company's 10 crore and he's supposed to get back 25 crore from this transaction and a year later goes by and n Nirav Modi doesn't contact him. He keeps sending him emails, and Nirav Modi doesn't contact him back. And so the first thing this guy, Hari Prasad, does is he contacts the police department. He goes, hey, police, this is going on.

They do nothing. He contacts the CIB. They do nothing. Then he contacts the prime minister's office. They do jack shit. Then he contacts this group called the ROC, which is, I think, the Registrar of Corporations or something like that, which is like a group of people that are overseeing companies in India.

They say the case is closed. No one gives a shit. And so this is Prime Minister Modi, which there is no relation. There is no relation to Prime Minister Modi. But because this scheme has been going on since 2011, both the BJP and Modi's administration are blaming each other. So Narendra Modi is like, see, these guys have to escape the country because if they didn't, they know they'd go to jail under my administration. So at this time, his brother goes, I fucked up. And so he and this is where I think the crime starts to,

starts getting a bit more notice. The chart sheet reveals his brother, Nehal Modi, destroyed evidence like cell phones of their company's dummy directors in Dubai and Hong Kong and tried to hide 50 kilograms of gold, which is about $2.5 million worth of gold. That is one uncomfortable airplane ride. So, at this time,

India's agencies finally figure out something's fucked up. And, incidentally, Nirav Modi surprisingly gets away. Just gets to leave the country. Apparently, they don't realize an international fraudster is going to the UK in this reality.

So he goes to England and is hanging out there. He's the guy who used Jeffrey Epstein's passport. So at this time, India wants extradition of Nirav Modi and people in the UK are starting to learn about this case. And while this is going on, actually, he's starting other companies in other countries. Hell yeah.

Because the news media is not being picked up everywhere, it's not as prevalent, he's opening up stores in Hong Kong, he's fucking in London hanging out, he's having a fucking ball. And there are people capturing him in London just like walking his dog, out and i mean like you know you want to talk about the balls on a billionaire an entire country wants you for a

multi-billion dollar scheme and this guy is being accosted by uh journalists and activists and he's rocking a handlebar mustache and a 10 000 pound ostrich leather jacket and he doesn't give a fuck and uh we have a drop of nerof modi that we want to play here because the journalists are asking him questions and he gives very thorough answers to these questions sorry no comment he just says no comment two or like four or five times and that's exactly that's all he says just confirm whether you've applied for political asylum that's all i want to know can you confirm that sorry no comment you confirmed if you're a lot of people a lot of money mr sorry sorry no comment no comment who would very much like to know where you are sorry no comment how long do you intend to stay in england i just want to say with that mustache

if he put on some leather chaps he could clean up at stonewall he does look like obese freddie mercury he does have a little bit yeah i do like if we were putting together a book of billionaire quotes the two most popular ones would be no comment and i do not recall i think i'd put an honorable mention of uh i don't even like massages yeah that that's shooting its way into the number three spot yeah with the news of this year so uh at this time the or i didn't know about jeff's other activities the uh 24 accused named in prosecution of this complaint are

Nirav Modi, Nishal Modi, his brother, Nihal Modi, his other brother, Deepak Modi, his dad, Shyam Sundar,

Wadhwa, Golant Kutcheri, Purvi Mehta, Majank Mehta, Saju Prokhan, Aditya Navanti, Hemant Bhatt, I'm only halfway through

the stupid list, Sabaj Prabh, Mihar Bansali, Dharmesh Bortra, Rajshir Jewelry Company, Private Limited, Solar Exports, Stellar Diamonds, Diamonds R Us, Firestar International, Private Firestar Diamond International,

Private Limited, Nirav Modi Trust Trustee, Firestone Trading Private Limited, Mock Business Expenses, LTD, and Bentley Properties Private LTD. Just imagine how long this episode would have taken if I was the one pronouncing those. And I didn't even do that good of a job.

Wait for a special release. Fucking 20 minutes bonus on the patron where 50 Indian names, Bara Poochie. Now cows, um, mace poo. I like in the previous episode. You're doing great, Sean.

Keep going. I cautiously sounded out the word obfuscation. It's an English word. I've read that word a million times. But I just like, in the clutch, I can't make the fucking three shot of pronouncing obfuscation. So at this time, he has been arrested in the UK.

Yes. And the extradition process is pending. His properties, his vehicles, his various... There's still like artifacts in the museum where the extradition is processing back to the India. His vehicles, his property in New York, in London, and I believe some in Hong Kong are being seized. So, you know, we will see what happened with this. And also, oh, one last thing I want to mention is that there is a book coming out. Actually, it's already out, but you can't buy it in the U.S., which is another part of the fucking scrubbing of the internet that is our billionaire class.

But the book is called Flawed, the Rise and Fall of India's Diamond Mogul, Nirav Modi. Now, that's a book that came out August 30th, and you can't actually get in the U.S. for some reason. However, there's another book that came out. What's his uncle up to? His uncle's in the Caribbean, and he says that he can't go to the countries that he might be tried in because he's afraid of flying.

King. I'll look it up in a second, but there is another book that came out in 2007, and the main character of that book is named Nirav Choksi, which is a combination of his name and his uncle's name, and it's the exact same thing that's being chronicled right now so there is a fictionalized version of what is happening in real life right now that was released in the early mid-2000s nice I did just

want to clarify so he fled India in like 2018 or around when yeah I think it was 2017 where he yeah and goes to the UK and sometimes I think he's also in New York. Here's the uncle. That is one fat dude. Oh no, I've looked at this guy's face a little too long. Oh, nice. Oh yeah.

God, who does that look like? Flanked by his... Not daughters. No, Bollywood actresses. No, you know what? He looks like... This is Mehul Choksi flanked by two Bollywood actresses no you know what he looks like this is Mehul Choksi flanked by two Bollywood actresses at like a horse race I think that must suck to be like a Bollywood actress and like you're not making enough from movies

so you have to like make money by sitting next to this guy at a horse race and feeding him grapes he really does look like an Indian version of the fat dude from the Adams family. Yeah, Choksi's a fat piece of shit. He looks like the guy from The Meaning of Life who explodes. Yeah, this book is written by this guy, Ravi Subramanian,

and it's called In the Name of God. And he introduced a character named Nirav Choksi. This book came out in early 2018, so, like, people have known about this scam and scheme, and, you know, if you look up Modi corruption, you can find everything from Nirov Modi to Lalit Modi, another corrupt individual, and Narendra Modi's corrupt practices as well. If you look up Narendra Modi, the prime minister has referenced Melu Choksi in a couple of his speeches.

And at this Davos, Switzerland economic event, Nirav is pictured with Narendra Modi. And so, listen, the corruption in this case is wrapped within the politics and the elite of India. And so I don't know exactly what happened to this, but I guarantee Nirav Modi is saying gonna say no comment to his grave he doesn't give a fuck you don't rock an ostrich leather jacket when you're on the land this is not how you do it you know he got it from Paul Manafort

I was just thinking if we ever have honest law enforcement in this country like the Davos summit would be the perfect place to arrest everybody. Like that fucking mafia meeting in the 50s they bust up. Like all the fucking crime leaders are there. But yeah, we'll see what happens with the Nirav Modi family. One person on Twitter posted

that this Narendra Modi giving Russia a billion dollar loan might be somehow linked to all this stuff. And I don't know. That's a little far-fetched. But the reality is that India, China, and Russia buddying up to one another within scams of diamond, wealth, and the elite is going to be doomed for all of us and not in the capitalistic way our socialists like to believe. Well, before we end, I did want to mention, because we forgot to, is Yogi's been buying things off the military surplus store

and he actually has a nice military sweater that makes it look like he's ready to disappear people in Kashmir. I just like military surplus stuff because it's often cheaper and it's pretty good quality. When the stolen valor people come across to you, you have a story to tell them actually. What campaign were you involved in? Your net jacket? I'm like, jacket yeah in Kashmir our thoughts and prayers go to the individuals of Kashmir who are dealing with

the Janicidal cleansing right now oh and I did want to tease the Patreon this week this week our Patreon is going to be on Hassan Jamil is Rihanna's boyfriend is a billionaire Saudi who's

Saudi Arabian whose family has been been linked to terrorism so I think we can safely say that Jamal Khashoggi was just another n-word on the hit list and with that that's been Grub Stakers I'm Yogi Pahul I'm Andy Palmer Steve Jeffers I'm Sean P. McCarthy thanks for listening Hi Rihanna what's your name?

Aisha. Hi, Aisha. So, it was kind of hard hearing you talk about humanity because as your neighbor, a Pakistani, I know you're a bit of a hypocrite because you tweeted on February 26th, J-Hind, hashtag Indian Armed Forces. You are a UNICEF ambassador for peace, and you're encouraging nuclear war against Pakistan. There's no winner in this. As a Pakistani, millions of people like me have supported you in your business of following what a nuclear war.

Whenever you're done venting got it done okay cool so um i have many many friends thanks girls i have many many friends from pakistan um and i am from india and war is not something that i'm really fond of but but I am patriotic. So I'm sorry if I hurt sentiments to people who do love me and have loved me. But I think that all of us have a sort of middle ground that we all have to walk, just like you probably do as well. The way you came at me right now, we're all here for love. Tell us a little bit more you're now subject to an arrest warrant my friend you're a wanted fugitive by the sounds of it how does that make you feel how does that make you

feel mr murdy how does that make you feel has Has the situation now changed? Has the situation now changed, Nirav? You've spent a long time evading justice by the sounds of it. You're now subject to an arrest warrant. Just tell us how that makes you feel. How does that make you feel, Mr Modi? Are you planning to contest extradition, Mr. Modi? These are very simple questions, Neera. They're very simple questions, and a lot of people,

a lot of people want to know the answer. A lot of people want to know the answer to these questions, Neera. So you can run away as fast as you like. But at the end of the day... Can I speak with justice, Mr. Modi? Well, no one's saying justice, but maybe it's just... OK, fine. If you'd just like to care to say a word or two, it might help us out. And then we'll perhaps, you know, give you a chance.

Give you a chance to answer for yourself mr moody would you just like to share a word or two are you planning to contest all right well off he goes again. Is there a court proceeding on Mr Modi now that he's gone? Would you consider sharing some thoughts on that? He's a very contestant. Mr Modi, could you comment something? This is an opportunity for you to speak, Mr Modi. No comment.

OK. I guess there's no point asking you what happened to the alleged billion pounds or so that appear to have gone missing. You have a red corner notice against you via Interpol. And to the best of my understanding, Nirad, you've just had an arrest warrant issued against you. You're now effectively a wanted criminal. You're walking the streets of London. Mr. Modi, have you resumed business here? Can you explain any of this?

You've resumed business here, Mr Modi. Can you tell us a little about that? No comment. Okay, well... But Mr Modi, don't you... Do share some thoughts on what you're planning next, because there's a court process on, we believe,

and there's an arrest warrant that has been issued are you planning to contest that? Okay. Nirav, are you going to contest the extradition because this is obviously as we've seen in the case of Vijay Mallya and so on it's a lengthy and protracted process we're probably going to be seeing quite a lot of each other over the next couple of years. Do you have any feelings? Do you want to share with us what your future plans are?

No comment. Okay, fine. All right, well, here's another question for you. Then your Indian passport has been revoked. Do you still carry your Belgian passport? Is there a chance of you absconding? Are you walking now? Is your business up and running? Okay.

Mr. Modi, is your business up and running? What visa are you working on here in the UK? Okay. Now, obviously, no comment is a perfectly fair answer, but you know This doesn't look good on you. You seem very evasive You seem to be you know running away from the issues running away from the story if you were to say anything Whether you think so good as to tell us Are you planning to contest the extradition proceeding against you? No comment. Okay. But surely you know there's an extradition warrant that's been issued to Mr. Modi?

Are you appearing on the 25th of March, Mr. Modi? Are you appearing on the 25th of March? Are you appearing on the 25th of March, Mr. Modi? Just a very quick comment on that, sir. Would you care to share any thoughts with us simply? Oh, I do beg your pardon? Some comments, please. Well, Mr. Modi? On something. Mr. Modi, you have a business here. Could you tell us a little about that?

We also understand you have a national insurance number, so you're clearly here quite legitimately. Nobody's disputing that. Just if you could share your thoughts, what you're planning next, Mr. Modi. And also, what visa are you on? I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa.

I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa.

I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. I'm on a visa. Nobody is disputing that. Just if you could share your thoughts, what you are planning next, Mr Modi. And also, what visa are you on? What's the nature of your status here? Can you at least tell us that, Nirav? Is it true that you are here on an investor visa? Do you no longer have a passport,

but you've invested money in the country? You've invested money in the country? Some comment please, Mr Modi. You've invested money in the country and therefore you are... Mr Modi, this is a very simple question we are asking you, Mr Modi. Just very simple matters that are out in the public space, whether you are planning to contest any extradition proceedings, if you can just give us a quick comment on that. No comment.

Do you have another passport, Mr Modi? I have a quick comment on that. No comment. Okay. Do you have another passport, Mr Modi? Do you contemplate having not come here and going back to India? Do you contemplate that ever? Living a life hiding is not really a great thing, is it, Mr Modi? Being tracked like this is not really good, is it? You're stalking me. Please stop stalking me. You're not stalking you, sir. We are trying to get answers to the questions

which you have run away from. No, this is just basic journalism. You're accused of having embezzled nearly a billion pounds sterling. It's a perfectly fair question. If you'd like to defend yourself, you're more than welcome. The floor is yours.

This is your forum. Tell us what happened to the money. And if you're in any sort of trouble, tell us more. Tell us everything you can tell us to help clear your name. This is your opportunity, Mr. Modi. Just do share some simple thoughts, Mr. Modi, on what you're planning next. No comment. Okay. Uber might work. Okay, I'm done.

You're done. Okay, well I can't. Okay, well it's goodbye from us for now, Nirabh, but I'm sure we'll be seeing you again in due course. Sorry, no comment.