UK court orders Nirav Modi to pay $10.7M to Bank of India

A London court has ordered fugitive diamond businessman Nirav Modi to pay more than $10.7 million to the Bank of India, marking a significant victory for the state-owned lender in a long-running civil recovery case. The ruling was delivered on Tuesday by Justice Simon Tinkler of the London Circuit Commercial Court, who found Modi personally liable under a guarantee he signed for a loan to one of his companies.

The case centers on a loan facility extended by the Bank of India in July 2012 to Firestar Diamond FZE, a Dubai-based company within Modi's Firestar Group. Modi executed a personal guarantee for the loan on August 3, 2013, pledging to repay the debt if the company defaulted. Following the eruption of the alleged multi-billion dollar fraud at Punjab National Bank (PNB) in early 2018, the Bank of India moved to recall the loan. The bank issued repayment demands to both the company and Modi in March and April of that year, which went unanswered.

In his defense, Modi argued that the personal guarantee was unenforceable, that he never received valid repayment notices, and that the bank lacked proper grounds to terminate the loan. The court rejected these arguments. Justice...