Mehul Choksi, Fugitive Jeweler Wanted by India, Is Arrested in Belgium

Mehul Choksi, a wealthy diamond dealer whom India has sought in connection with a fraud case involving one of India’s largest state-run banks, has been arrested in Belgium, his lawyer said on Monday.

Mr. Choksi, 65, is wanted on charges relating to an attempt to defraud the publicly owned Punjab National Bank of nearly $1.8 billion in a case that caused a national scandal when it became public in 2018.

Mr. Choksi left India shortly before the authorities there went public with the accusations against him that year. He has been living in the Caribbean and in Belgium since then, according to the Indian news media.

Police officers in the Belgian city of Antwerp, a center of the global diamond trade, arrested Mr. Choksi on Saturday, according to the Belgian public prosecutor’s office, which said it had requested the arrest.

The Belgian authorities did not immediately provide details of the circumstances that led to Mr. Choksi’s arrest, but his lawyer, Vijay Aggarwal, said in an interview that India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, the main government investigative agency, had asked for Mr. Choksi’s extradition.

Mr. Aggarwal said that he would seek his client’s immediate release, arguing that he was in ill health and undergoing treatment for cancer.

“He is not a flight risk,” Mr. Aggarwal told a news conference in Delhi. “His medical condition is very precarious.”

Mr. Aggarwal has denied accusations of wrongdoing in the case. Since leaving India, he has also spent time in Dominica and Antigua, two countries in the Caribbean, according to the Indian news media.

Mr. Choksi’s nephew Nirav Modi, once one of India’s most prominent high-end jewelers, was arrested in London in 2019 in connection with the bank fraud. Mr. Modi, who has also denied wrongdoing, had fled India weeks before officials there accused him, Mr. Choksi and others in the fraud case. Mr. Modi has fought Indian efforts to have him extradited, and remains jailed in Britain.

The case against Mr. Choksi and Mr. Modi reinforced a perception in India that taxpayer-owned banks were financing the lavish lifestyles of a rising elite. Attempts to bring the two to justice have captivated the Indian public.

Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting from Brussels and Mike Ives from Seoul, South Korea.