ESQ Legal Practice Magazine JUNE 2014 EDITION | Page 38

counts of obtaining money by money?” she told the trial.
deception totalling $3.5
Somaia was said to have lured
million.
his victims by claiming that he
Mr Ketan Somaia “was what is had a personal fortune of $100
sometimes called a confidence million and that his companies
trickster, but on a grand
were worth $500 million.
scale,” said William Boyce QC
He laid on all-expenses-paid
for the prosecution.
trips to Africa to entertain
His lavish lifestyle was being business clients, and his
paid for by people whose
Dolphin group owned some of
money was “taken and not
the most prestigious hotels
given back”, in a “systematic including Treetops Lodge,
series of frauds”.
where the young Queen
Elizabeth spent her
The Guardian reported that
honeymoon.
Mr Mirchandani, who made
his fortune in food and
In Somaia's defence, barrister
chemicals, pursued Somaia for James Woods QC claimed Mr
Mirchandani had given the
more than a decade and was
money knowing there was a
the primary complainant in
the successful Old Bailey trial. risk it might be lost.
The jury found Somaia had
also defrauded a London
businessman, Dilip Shah, of
£200,000.

NOT ALL WEALTHY
Somaia's victims were not all
wealthy.

“We suggest Murli
Mirchandani, rather than the
weak man portrayed, is more
likely a hard-nosed business
entrepreneur. It was he who
looked at Mr Somaia in order
to try and embark upon a
business partnership.

“He was prepared to pay out
big money to secure that
His personal assistant, Arifa
business relationship. He
Parkar, said in evidence that
gambled his money on Ketan
she had eventually left
Somaia. You win some and
Somaia's employ, exhausted
by fielding calls from unpaid you lose some but you take it
creditors, after he failed to pay in your stride. This was no
fraud.”
her wages.
“How could I survive without

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GOVERNMENT
CONTRACTS

Prosecution Service was not
able to secure his extradition

Somaia was born in Kenya is
alleged to have made most of
his money from government
contracts issued during the era
of former President Moi.

In 2008, he was arrested in
India while attending a
wedding, and extradited to
the UK.

Under one of these contracts,
he was alleged to have been
paid to import hundreds of
second-hand black cabs from
the UK to Nairobi, but a judge
found that while 500 had been
paid for, only 300 were
delivered.
He was sent to prison for the
alleged scam in 2004, but his
conviction was quashed the
following year.
When the Bank of Credit and
Commerce International
collapsed after an
international corruption
scandal in 1991, Somaia
bought a number of its
branches and changed the
name to Delphis.

The Hertfordshire case was
dropped, on the grounds the
money had been repaid and
Somaia was in ill health.

'SOME CLOSURE'
Speaking after the verdict,
Mirchandani said: “Securing a
conviction against Mr Somaia
will not undo the harm he has
caused and the pain he has
inflicted upon me and my
family, but knowing that he
has been brought to justice
helps bring us some closure.”

Concluding the trial, Judge
Richard Hone QC said: “This
case has been exceptional for a
number of reasons – the sums
But a decade later Delphis also involved, the extraordinary
collapsed, with its branches in lifestyles, the famous names,
the world of international
Nairobi, Mauritius and
Tanzania closed or bailed out. businessmen and the
outpouring of $23 million
By 2002, Somaia had been
simply relying ۈH