Mum court allows auction of NiMo art collection

  • | Wednesday | 20th March, 2019

MUMBAI: A special court in Mumbai on Wednesday allowed for an auction of a high valued art collection of Nirav Modi , the absconding diamantaire. The collection boasts a Rs 4 crore Raja Ravi Varma masterpiece titled ‘The maharajah of Travancore and his younger brother welcoming Richard Grenville in 1880’. Two of these accounts have just Rs 5,000 and Rs 90,000, respectively, says the PNB application to the DRT.The assets list submitted by PNB had included 125 paintings, which art collectors would be ready to fight over. The ED had recently attached properties belonging to Modi, valued at Rs 147 crore, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in its ongoing investigation into the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case which has him as a main accused. The other accused include his maternal uncle, Mehul Choksi.Modi had a collection paintings of celebrated artists such as V S Gaitonde, M F Husain, K K Hebbar, Anjolie Ela Menon, Vishwanath Nageshkar, Nandalal Bose and Vivan Sundaram.

MUMBAI: A special court in Mumbai on Wednesday allowed for an auction of a high valued art collection of Nirav Modi , the absconding diamantaire. Reports say he has been arrested on Wednesday in UK.Special ED counsel H S Venegaonkar informed special PMLA court Judge Salman Azmi that Income Tax department may be allowed to proceed with the auction of Modi’s art collection which had been attached recently by the agency but said the proceeds be deposited in court.The court accepted his submission. The ED had recently attached properties belonging to Modi, valued at Rs 147 crore, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in its ongoing investigation into the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case which has him as a main accused. The other accused include his maternal uncle, Mehul Choksi.Modi had a collection paintings of celebrated artists such as V S Gaitonde, M F Husain, K K Hebbar, Anjolie Ela Menon, Vishwanath Nageshkar, Nandalal Bose and Vivan Sundaram. The collection boasts a Rs 4 crore Raja Ravi Varma masterpiece titled ‘The maharajah of Travancore and his younger brother welcoming Richard Grenville in 1880’. Whether it forms a part of the attachment is not clear.Modi flew out of India before the bank registered a case against him with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).PNB had launched a legal battle to recover Rs 7,000 crore from Modi and his companies, allegedly availed through “fraudulent letters of undertaking”. In a letter to the bank, Modi had denied that the LOUs were fraudulent.In a statement last month, the ED had said, “The ED has provisionally attached movable and immovable properties located in Mumbai and Surat, having market value of Rs147.72 crore consisting of eight cars, plant and machinery, consignments of jewellery, paintings and immovable property, owned by Nirav Modi and his group companies, namely Firestar Diamond International Private Limited, Firestar International Private Limited, Radheshir Jewelry Company Private Limited and Rhythm House Private Limited.”Meanwhile, to secure its losses, PNB too had earlier produced a list of Modi’s assets valued at Rs 3,402 crore before the debt recovery tribunal (DRT) to seek attachment orders. The bank had approached the DRT against Modi and 15 others, including his wife Ami, his brothers Neeshal and Nehal, his three children, his father Deepak Modi, and his companies—Stellar Diamonds, Solar Exports, Diamond R US, Firestar International, Firestar Diamond International and A N M Enterprises.In his four PNB accounts, Modi collectively holds all of Rs 36 lakh. Two of these accounts have just Rs 5,000 and Rs 90,000, respectively, says the PNB application to the DRT.The assets list submitted by PNB had included 125 paintings, which art collectors would be ready to fight over. Besides Varma, it boasts Husain’s Rs 53 lakh ‘Veena player’ and his other works, a 1963 Hebbar oil on canvas, Om Soorya’s ‘Narcissus was he seeing his own images in the lake’, a Rs 4.6 lakh Surendran Nair lithograph ‘About growing wings’, Amit Ambalal’s ‘Fruits of Fear’, J Sultan Ali’s ‘Parmannu series’, including titles such as ‘Shatruta’ and ‘Adharma’, and Jayashree Chakravarty’s ‘Fortune Teller’.

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