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Antigua and Barbuda's Minister of Justice, Attorney General Steadroy Benjamin, had ordered his staff to alter the police report about India's fugitive master, fraudster Mehul Choksi's illegal arrival in Dominica, to fabricate a bogus kidnapping story, according to financial crime consultant Kenneth Rijock's Financial Crime Blog.
Benjamin was thus the key figure behind the two-year delay in Choksi's extradition to India. Mehul Chinubhai Choksi is an Indian businessman living in the Caribbean country of Antigua and Barbuda, who is wanted by the Indian judicial authorities for criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, cheating and dishonesty including delivery of property, corruption and money laundering. The altered police report was used by Choksi's attorneys to convince Dominican judicial authorities to dismiss Choksi's unlawful entry case, so that he could return to Antigua and thus remain immune from deportation and extradition to India, over fraud claims of USD 2 billion. According to Kenneth Rijock's Financial Crime Blog, internal correspondence amongst government officials, obtained from local Labour Party sources, confirmed Benjamin's illegal alteration of police records, showing his direct role in the manipulation of evidence. Rijock in his blog writes that Choksi bestowed bribes on the Antiguan government to have his extradition case indefinitely delayed. "We have previously detailed his influence over a magistrate and a senior police official; new evidence in our possession has verified this information, and showed that Choksi literally rules his own legal proceedings in Antigua's court system, with the assistance of a "dream team" of attorneys in three Caribbean countries," Rijock writes. Rijock said that confidential correspondence was made available to him by his Dominica sources which shows that two prominent East Caribbean law firms sought to intimidate and influence local police and judicial officers in Dominica, to extricate Choksi from his criminal case there, by grossly exaggerating his medical condition, and throwing their considerable legal weight around. (ANI)
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