Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Vanuatu’s prime minister ordered the cancellation of a passport issued by the island nation for the Indian businessman Lalit Modi, who is desired by Delhi in a corruption case.
The order occurred three days after India confirmed that Mr. Modi had obtained the citizenship of Vanuatu, a series of more than 80 islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Mr. Modi, the former head of the Indian Premier League (IPL), is sought by supposedly manipulating the offers during his mandate as head of the richest Cricket Tournament in the world.
Modi, who has been living in the United Kingdom since 2010, has always denied accusations.
India has made several failed attempts to extradite it.
On Friday, the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of India, Randhir Jaiswal, told journalists that Mr. Modi had requested to deliver his Indian passport in London.
“We are also given to understand that the citizenship of Vanuatu has acquired. We continue to pursue the case against him as required by law,” Jaiswal said.
The news that Mr. Modi became a citizen of Vanuatu had appeared in the headlines in India, where he was once the face of the glamorous IPL tournament rich in cash. It was a regular presence in the social scene, rubbing shoulders with Bollywood stars and the elite of India.
But on Monday, Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Jotham Napat announced that his country had decided to cancel Mr. Modi.
Napat said that a Vanuatu passport was a “privilege” and that “applicants should seek citizens for legitimate reasons.”
“None of those legitimate reasons includes trying to avoid extradition, that recent events brought to light clearly indicated that it was the intention of Mr. Modi,” a press release told Napat.
He said that the background verifications and Interpol projections made during the modi request for a passport had not shown criminal convictions.
But, he added that in the last 24 hours, he had realized that Interpol had twice rejected India’s requests to issue an alert notice about Mr. Modi, citing a lack of “substantive judicial evidence.”
“Any alert would have activated an automatic rejection of the citizen application of Mr. Modi,” the statement added.
The measure is likely to give relief to the Indian authorities. Unlike the United Kingdom, Vanuatu, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, does not have an extradition treaty with India.
Extradition treaties allow the repatriation of people accused of crimes among countries.
A day before, Mr. Modi wrote in a mail In X (previously Twitter) that there were no pending cases against him in any court of India and accused the means of selling “false news” about him.
Modi was fundamental to found the IPL in 2008, which has now become a multimillion -dollar industry.
The main accusations against Mr. Modi are related to rigging offers during the auction of two team franchises in 2010. He was also accused of selling the transmission and internet rights without authorization.
In 2013, the Cricket Control Board in India (BCCI) prohibited Mr. Modi of Any participation in Cricket activities for life.
Follow BBC News India in Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
