Modi’s Kangaroo Court Sanctions Illegal Theft of Devas in Show Trial
Decision Claims Devas Will “Abuse the Process of Law” By Enforcing Its Own ICC Arbitration Award
May 25, 2021 – Following the decision by the National Company Law Tribunal to forcibly liquidate and sanction the illegal theft of Devas Multimedia Private Ltd. from its shareholders at the behest of the Modi government, Matthew D. McGill of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, lead counsel for a number of the shareholders of Devas Multimedia Private Ltd., made the following statement:
“This proceeding was an obvious sham from the start—a show trial in every sense—and today’s specious ruling just confirms that. Rather than fulfill its internationally recognized obligations, the Modi regime instead has taken India down the path of Putin’s Russia. It has fabricated claims of misfeasance and has even sought to jail its lawful creditors. It is an appalling and utterly dishonorable course of conduct for only one reason: to evade payment of over US$1.5 billion owed to Devas, its shareholders and investors. We will appeal today’s ruling in the hope that India’s judiciary will restore and vindicate the principle—once well-established in India—that the rule of law is greater than the rule of any man.”
Unravelling Modi’s Theft of Devas Multimedia Pvt Ltd.: How & Why
The decision by the Modi government, and their proxy, the NCLT, to liquidate Devas is part of a deliberate scheme devised to evade payment of a lawful international arbitration award.
Their scheme is now fully transparent following the NCLTs own ‘smoking gun’ admission where they admit the reason to liquidate is to prevent Devas from “enforcing the ICC Award,” which they claim would “abuse the process of law.”
The Modi government must seize Devas because Devas Multimedia Pvt Ltd. owns the ICC Award, and a sham process where Modi could railroad Devas into forced government liquidation was the only tactic left for Modi after India lost in every arbitration tribunal and in U.S. judicial confirmation of the award.
The proceedings followed the Modi government launching a government committee to take all measures “on a war footing” to destroy Devas days after the ICC Award was confirmed by a U.S. federal court in October 2020. As a result, the Modi government weaponized its judiciary to provide any means to evade payment, inventing false criminal allegations, which were dismissed in arbitration. This desperate maneuver is part of a consistent pattern exposed by three international arbitration tribunals that uncovered how India has been scrambling to invent false justifications for its lawless behavior against Devas for a decade, which resulted in judgments totaling $1.5 billion including interest owed to Devas, its Mauritian shareholders and Deutsche Telekom.
This latest and most brazen use of state power against a law-abiding company sends a warning to the world: you could be next if you invest in Modi’s India. No one is safe.