Jatin Mehta knew exactly when his game was up. Between August and November 2012, he quietly stepped down from his key companies, Forever Precious and Winsome Diamonds & Jewellery. The timing was telling. Winsome, the diamond and jewellery exporter he had built into a market leader, was teetering on the edge of financial collapse. Its lenders had already sensed trouble and were closing in.
Mehta timed his exit to perfection, leaving India with his family just as defaults began cascading across the banks that had financed his empire. By 2014, he had acquired citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis, placing himself well beyond India's easy extradition reach.
Few white-collar fugitives have planned their escape with such precision. Not only had he orchestrated one of India's largest banking frauds, the vanishing act, it would seem, was built into his business plan.
Diamond roots
Born into the close-knit Palanpuri Jain diamond community, Mehta was raised in the noisy, bustling lanes of Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar, where business was traditionally conducted on trust sealed with a nod and an unwritten word. Men like Mehta, Nirav Modi, and Mehul Choksi would, of course, break that covenant, using similar means.
After incorporating Su-Raj Diamonds in 1985, later renamed Winsome Diamonds, Mehta took the company public in 1986, making it the first diamond unit in India to tap the primary market. The stock, touted as a blue-chip gem export story, opened to enthusiastic response. Decades later, as the fraud unravelled, the company’s shares turned into a worthless penny stock before being delisted, leaving thousands of gullible retail investors holding useless paper.
To the outside world, Mehta remained a soft-spoken, low-profile tycoon. Within his company, however, he was plotting an elaborate financial strategy designed to siphon money from lenders and shareholders alike.
The money trail
The mechanics were deceptively simple. Standard Chartered and other international bullion suppliers provided raw gold to Winsome. To secure these shipments, a consortium led by Punjab National Bank and including Standard Chartered issued Standby Letters of Credit (SBLCs), guaranteeing payment to overseas suppliers if Winsome defaulted.
The company converted the bullion into jewellery and exported it to 13 companies in the United Arab Emirates. The entire manufacturing and export cycle took barely six days, yet Winsome secured credit terms of up to 270 days.
For nearly nine months at a time, thousands of crores remained within Mehta's financial network, earning treasury returns and, investigators allege, flowing through offshore structures.
The collapse
Then came the grand sting.
In March 2013, the 13 UAE importers stopped paying Winsome, claiming they had collectively lost almost $1 billion in trading complex foreign exchange derivatives on the Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange.
With no money arriving from Dubai, Winsome defaulted on its obligations to international bullion suppliers. The suppliers invoked the guarantees, forcing Indian banks to honour more than ₹6,800 crore (over $1 billion at the time) in liabilities. Punjab National Bank alone suffered an exposure exceeding ₹1,800 crore.
When the Central Bureau of Investigation registered its first cases in 2017 and later filed chargesheets, it alleged that the derivatives-loss explanation was a fabrication. According to the agency, the 13 UAE importers were not independent buyers but entities controlled by Mehta through Jordanian businessman Haytham Salman Ali Abu Obeidah, who investigators allege acted as a front.
Legal pursuit
Progress in the case was slow, largely because Mehta had carefully insulated himself across multiple jurisdictions.
The legal pressure intensified after Standard Chartered, acting both as a bullion supplier and one of the principal pursuing creditors, joined hands with court-appointed liquidators Grant Thornton to pursue him in the English courts.
In May 2022, the High Court of England and Wales granted a worldwide freezing order worth approximately $932 million against Mehta, his wife and his sons. In February 2023, the same court dismissed his attempt to halt a recovery claim of about $1 billion brought by Grant Thornton and Standard Chartered.
In India, criminal proceedings initiated by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate remain pending, while banks continue efforts to recover their dues through multiple jurisdictions. Despite years of litigation and asset-tracing, a substantial portion of the money remains unrecovered, and Mehta continues to live outside India's reach.
By the time Indian court notices were posted, Mehta was already living comfortably in high-end international enclaves, insulated behind his Caribbean passport.
He remains the ultimate ghost of Indian corporate banking, the quiet man who performed a billion-dollar vanishing act and left banks holding the tab.
For more such stories, read The Enterprising Indian: Stories From India Inc.