The market regulator Sebi has ordered all banks to freeze the accounts of wanted diamond trader Mehul Choksi's after his failure to pay a fine of £500,000 in a case involving the manipulation of the stock price of his company Gitanjali Gems. Sebi also ordered freezing of all his demat accounts for the same reason and asked mutual funds not to redeem any of his units.
In October 2022, Sebi had passed an order after its investigations found that Choksi, between July 2011 and January 2012, had manipulated the stock price of Gitanjali Gems. It was found that 20 entities related to Choksi were used to manipulate the stock price. Subsequently, Choksi was fined £500,000. Since he failed to pay the penalty amount, Sebi has now moved to recover the penalty and an additional Rs 35,00,000 as the interest on the penalty from Choksi’s bank and demat accounts.
Gitanjali Gems' chairman and managing director, Choksi, was also a member of the promoter group. He is Nirav Modi's maternal uncle, a businessman who is also on the run and is thought to have scammed the Punjab National Bank of roughly £1.4 billion. Both Choksi and Modi had fled India after the PNB scam was exposed in 2018 and are currently among the most wanted people for the country’s investigating agencies.