Jatin Mehta brings $5 billion lawsuit against De Beers, Standard Chartered, and Kroll

25 Jul 2022 , 11:00 AM

Diamantaire Jatin Mehta, who currently resides in London after obtaining citizenship from Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, has filed a lawsuit in Surat seeking $5 billion in damages from De Beers, the world's largest diamond miner, Standard Chartered, and Kroll, a US business investigation firm, on the basis of claims that they conspired to bring down his business empire and tarnish his family.

A string of defaults by Jatin Mehta's companies and Forever in the summer of 2013 shook the Indian jewellery industry and strained the relationship between banks and diamond and bullion households. Each default set off the next.

Banks never bought Mehta's claim that the defaults were caused by UAE clients of Winsome not making payments after their $1 billion currency spinoff bets went wrong. Mehta had previously stated that this was the reason for the defaults.

Following Mehta's resolve to compete with Russian mining giant Alrosa and his foray into lab-grown diamonds, De Beers is accused of fuelling a media rant. In response to the petition submitted before the district court in Surat, India's diamond polishing hub where Winsome maintains its registered office, DeBeers exploited its longstanding ties with Standard Chartered to corner Mehta.

Mehta claims that the Kroll report was prepared with a misleading narrative on purpose in order to harm the Winsome group's business. In response to the petition, StanChart never provided Winsome with the study, and some of the other banks in the consortium even thought that the report lacked sufficient evidence. Mehta said that StanChart was not a party to the dispute and had rejected his plan to recoup the delinquent corporations through the sale of lab-grown diamonds.

The Kroll report's findings were a key component of Winsome and Forever's corporate debt restructuring plan, and the petition stated that the "false report" "was designed to pre-empt any successful CDR." However, the article found a way to deal with De Beers by going to many diamond residences.

The petition further claims that StanChart failed to carry out the judgments Winsome and Forever had obtained from a UAE court against nonpaying UAE customers.

Studies of purported attempts to pass off synthetic (or lab-grown) diamonds as genuine gemstones–a claim Mehta believes was made by DeBeers–were what damaged Winsome's reputation.