Arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari to be extradited to India from UK

The Westminister court in the United Kingdom on Monday cleared the extradition of controversial arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari to India. Sanjay Bhandari’s extradition has been ordered in a money laundering case being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The agency was fighting the case in UK court on behalf of the Indian government.

The ED had initiated its investigation after a complaint under the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income & Assets) and Imposition of Act, 2015 [Black Money Act] was filed against accused Sanjay Bhandari before the court by Income Tax authorities. The ED had filed a chargesheet on June 1, 2020 against Sanjay Bhandari and other co-conspirators, including various companies floated by him in the overseas jurisdiction.“It was revealed that accused Sanjay Bhandari stashed black money abroad with the assistance of his accomplices to evade taxes causing huge financial loss to the national exchequer,” the ED had said earlier. Bhandari, who was resident in India for tax purposes at the time in 2015, is accused of concealing overseas assets, using backdated documents, benefiting from the assets not declared to the Indian tax authorities and then falsely informing the authorities that he did not possess any overseas assets.