Rakesh Saxena
Encyclopedia
Rakesh Saxena is an India
n financier
and trader in the derivatives
marketplace. On October 29, 2009, he was deported to Thailand
after fighting the longest extradition battle in Canadian
history, which lasted 13 years. He is accused of embezzlement
in 1994-1995. He is widely reputed to have been engaged in dozens of high risk ventures and deals throughout the world over the previous three decades.
and in Britain. He graduated with a Master of Arts
degree in English Literature. He worked in a foreign exchange and money market brokerage company, where he concentrated on complex financial transactions and foreign exchange
speculation, first in Delhi, Bombay, Sri Lanka and Singapore, and then for the Oriental Bank of Commerce
in Delhi
, before the Indian government nationalized it.
In the mid-1970s, Saxena moved to Hong Kong
, where he met his wife, a Thai national. In Hong Kong, he first worked as a foreign exchange dealer in Kowloon, and then joined Wocom Commodities. He moved his base to Bangkok in 1985 where the Bank of Thailand had announced the opening up of the forex markets. He then shifted focus to the derivatives
arena.
In Bangkok, Saxena dealt in speculation on buying and selling companies and wrote a financial column in the Bangkok Post
, spoke in seminars of foreign exchange trading and formed numerous contacts in the business community. Among his interests were mines in Sierra Leone
, companies in Australia
, Belize
, Canada
, Cayman Islands
, Russia
, Thailand
, Hong Kong
, Israel
, Cyprus
and the Virgin Islands
, and a number of Swiss bank accounts.
, and Saxena's consulting work continues to be informed by Marxist political theory.
Saxena sees no contradiction in being a wealthy Marxist. He is a theorist, not an activist, he said. "I'm not a Che Guevara," he said. "I'm not going to go sit in the jungle fighting. My analysis is basically a Marxist analysis of risk. I'm not a capitalist. I make money through sheer brain power."
However, reliable sources suggest that Saxena was (and remains) an active member and ideologue of the extremist Naxalite
movement in the 1970s and he has continuted to support far-left parties in Nepal and in India, including the Maoist Communist Parties of India and Nepal.
Bangkok Bank of Commerce collapsed in 1996 and the Bank of Thailand
took it over. The collapse contributed to the Asian financial recession, economic and political crisis and the 1997 devaluation of the baht. Saxena was at his residence in Prague or Zurich at the time the story broke, and he never returned to Thailand.
In June 1996, Thai authorities charged Saxena, Krikkiat Jalichandre, Rajan Pillai and Adnan Khashoggi and a number of other people with embezzling money estimated to be worth $US2.2 billion (or according to other estimates, $US88 million). Saxena himself had allegedly siphoned off £300 million in 1992-1993 through a string of derivative transactions. Saxena said that he was just an advisor and a trader and that the collapse of the real estate markets was the real trigger of the recession. His relationship with Russian tycoons and Arab sheikhs continues to be a subject of speculation.
arrested Saxena on July 7, 1996 at Whistler, British Columbia
, on behest of the Thai police. He was initially imprisoned for 2–3 days in a Canadian pre-trial centre. Saxena resisted extradition
, claiming that he would be killed if he would return to Thailand.
In February 1998, Saxena was put on bail of $2.5 million because he was regarded as a flight risk. British Columbia Supreme Court overturned this ruling on June 24, 1998, allowing him to resist extradition in Vancouver, under his own guards in an effective house arrest
at his own expense. On September 4, 1998 Thailand asked authorities in 22 countries to freeze his assets, which, at the time, amounted to $135–300 million. Thailand also filed a civil suit against him.
In September 2005, the lower Canadian court ruled that Saxena should be extradited but the government of Canada did not enforce this ruling. Saxena further delayed his extradition with appeals. On October 21, 2005, the Canadian court postponed Saxena's extradition once again until January 2006.
On March 3, 2006 Saxena lost his B.C. Court of Appeal bid to overturn the federal justice minister's order that he be surrendered to Thai authorities, despite his contention that he could be killed or tossed in an inhumane prison cell in Thailand. Saxena's lawyer appealed. One of the possible reasons cited for him being released was the recent coup d’état in Thailand, which ousted the internationally recognized government, thus causing significant turmoil for the crown.
On October 29, 2009 the Supreme Court of Canada
denied Saxena’s hearing request regarding a lower-court decision upholding his extradition. The Supreme Court gave no reason for its decision. Later that day, Saxena was turned over to Thai authorities and left Canada for Thailand.
of Sierra Leone in May 1997. Kabbah fled to Guinea
and set up a government in exile
. Around July 1997 he contacted British mercenary Tim Spicer
of the Sandline International
to organize a counter-coup. Saxena agreed to finance the countercoup in exchange for diamond
exploration permits.
According to the British Parliament's Report of the Sierra Leone Arms Investigation, Saxena would raise the money so that Sandline could hire soldiers and buy equipment. In return, Kabbah would give Saxena's companies permits for diamond exploration and promises of further business. Saxena would pay Sandline for their operations. However, someone leaked the relevant documents to The Globe and Mail
. In an interview the same year Kabbah denied knowledge of any negotiations with Saxena.
According to Spicer, who testified for the Report, Saxena did not give them the funds he had promised; reports have contradicted Spicer on this issue. Sandline bought more weapons from Bulgaria but they were too late - Nigeria
n-lead troops loyal to Kabbah had already seized the capital. As a result, Saxena did not receive the permits. Later British government investigation confirmed that Kabbah had not told the whole truth. In later interview Saxena claimed that he wanted to help for "ideological reasons" and the last thing on his mind was owning mines in Africa.
Adnan Khashoggi, Oleg Boiko, Rakesh Saxena, Amador Pastrana, and Regis Possino, a lawyer believed to be the chief architect of the General Commerce Bank transaction, together acquired General Commerce Bank, in Vienna Austria, from where they allegedly organized international stock and bond deals. Associated with Possino were Sheman Mazur and Raoul Berthamieu, from the U.S. Possino and Khashoggi were credited with raising over $65 million for Genesis International, prior to the selling of the shares being halted by the SEC. Neither Possino nor Khashoggi were implicated in any wrongdoing in that regard.
Victims came from many countries, including Australia, Britain, and South Africa. Again Saxena's exact role has never been determined in many of these transactions. His name never showed up in any ownership documents. The Austrian government has not charged him with anything. One reason may well be that, in many instances, it is believed, that parties involved in international deals pay Saxena simply to have him on side. Saxena is not averse to shorting stocks. According to one of India's biggest power brokers, Chandraswami
(also Nemi Chand Jain), Saxena is not averse to greenmail-type attacks on deals in progress, and due to his extensive knowledge of the markets (financial, economic and political), his reach is daunting, but his name is not on the paperwork. One senior Indian cabinet minister also alleged that Saxena is making options and futures prices on speculative Indian shares from offshore jurisdictions and that he is the price maker "of last recourse" for speculators in Mumbai.
Reports suggest that Saxena from his residence conducts several questionable and high-profile deals around the world, primarily deals in the exotic world of third world debt and derivatives; many such deals are, until now, outside the regulatory umbrellas and are likely to remain so for many more years.
Mr. Saxena and his company Westshore Ventures were sued by Pacific Energy & Mining Company of Reno, Nevada in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada for fraud and conspiracy to defraud Pacific Energy of over 1.5 million dollars. Pacific Energy had also filed a criminal complaint with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, however, the proceedings were stopped due to the extradition of Mr. Saxena to Thailand.
Since Mr. Saxena's extradition to Thailand, no additional securities frauds have been perpetrated by Mr. Saxena.
Rakesh Saxena was also a defendant in number of Civil Lawsuits in United States, including in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada; he won those cases or those cases simply faded away.
In India, Saxena has been accused of culpable homicide
, extortion
, uttering death threat
s and cheating in the death of biscuit tycoon Rajan Pillai. Those allegations were laid after the tycoon's widow accused Saxena and three others of conspiring to kill her husband. Pillai was introduced to Saxena by some prominent Indian power brokers, including Chandraswani. The tycoon's widow, former model Nina Pillai, was considered very close to Saxena by people who saw her often at Saxena's Bangkok residence. Former bank officials in Thailand have claimed that Nina Pillai continued to be financed by Saxena after her husband's death.
The Government of Thailand accuse Saxena embezzling $88 million from the Bangkok Bank of Commerce (BBC) and seeks his extradition from Canada. The bank has separately filed civil proceedings against Saxena. He has filed a counter-suit.
The collapse of the BBC was one of the first dominoes in a financial crisis that spread across Asia, shaking the world economy in 1997. While some blame Saxena for sparking the inferno - The Wall Street Journal described him as the "Mrs. Leary's cow of the global financial crisis" - he is not facing court action on that score. He is also linked to some of the major hedge fund problems of the late 1990s, particularly problems linked to third world bonds and leveraged currency and interest rate derivative
s on such bonds and to problems now associated with Russian and East Europe privatizations of the Yeltsin era.
No charges were laid in the ill-fated Sierra Leone affair. The British Parliament's Report of the Sierra Leone Arms Investigation concluded that the purchase of weapons with Saxena's money only technically broke a United Nations embargo and that Canada was not yet enforcing the embargo.
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n financier
Financier
Financier is a term for a person who handles typically large sums of money, usually involving money lending, financing projects, large-scale investing, or large-scale money management. The term is French, and derives from finance or payment...
and trader in the derivatives
Derivative (finance)
A derivative instrument is a contract between two parties that specifies conditions—in particular, dates and the resulting values of the underlying variables—under which payments, or payoffs, are to be made between the parties.Under U.S...
marketplace. On October 29, 2009, he was deported to Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
after fighting the longest extradition battle in Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
history, which lasted 13 years. He is accused of embezzlement
Embezzlement
Embezzlement is the act of dishonestly appropriating or secreting assets by one or more individuals to whom such assets have been entrusted....
in 1994-1995. He is widely reputed to have been engaged in dozens of high risk ventures and deals throughout the world over the previous three decades.
Early years
Rakesh Saxena studied in India at St. Stephen's CollegeSt. Stephen's College, Delhi
St. Stephen's College is a constituent college of the University of Delhi located in Delhi, India. The college admits both undergraduates and post-graduates, and awards degrees under the purview of the University. Famous for its rich history and many traditions, St...
and in Britain. He graduated with a Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
degree in English Literature. He worked in a foreign exchange and money market brokerage company, where he concentrated on complex financial transactions and foreign exchange
Foreign exchange market
The foreign exchange market is a global, worldwide decentralized financial market for trading currencies. Financial centers around the world function as anchors of trading between a wide range of different types of buyers and sellers around the clock, with the exception of weekends...
speculation, first in Delhi, Bombay, Sri Lanka and Singapore, and then for the Oriental Bank of Commerce
Oriental Bank of Commerce
Oriental Bank of Commerce is an India-based bank in Lahore , is one of the public sector banks in India...
in Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
, before the Indian government nationalized it.
In the mid-1970s, Saxena moved to Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, where he met his wife, a Thai national. In Hong Kong, he first worked as a foreign exchange dealer in Kowloon, and then joined Wocom Commodities. He moved his base to Bangkok in 1985 where the Bank of Thailand had announced the opening up of the forex markets. He then shifted focus to the derivatives
Derivative (finance)
A derivative instrument is a contract between two parties that specifies conditions—in particular, dates and the resulting values of the underlying variables—under which payments, or payoffs, are to be made between the parties.Under U.S...
arena.
In Bangkok, Saxena dealt in speculation on buying and selling companies and wrote a financial column in the Bangkok Post
Bangkok Post
The Bangkok Post is a broadsheet, English-language daily newspaper published in Bangkok, Thailand. The first issue was sold on August 1, 1946. It had four pages and cost 1 baht, a considerable amount at the time....
, spoke in seminars of foreign exchange trading and formed numerous contacts in the business community. Among his interests were mines in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
, companies in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Belize
Belize
Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Cayman Islands
Cayman Islands
The Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory and overseas territory of the European Union located in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman, located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
and the Virgin Islands
Virgin Islands
The Virgin Islands are the western island group of the Leeward Islands, which are the northern part of the Lesser Antilles, which form the border between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean...
, and a number of Swiss bank accounts.
Extradition to Thailand
On October 31, 2009, when the Supreme Court of Canada denied the final Appeal of Mr. Saxena, he was immediately handed over to Thai authorities who flew him to Thailand, where Mr. Saxena is now awaiting trial on Fraud charges. http://www.nationmultimedia.com/search/read.php?newsid=30115639&keyword=saxena+rakeshA Marxist Millionaire
As a student, he embraced MarxismMarxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, and Saxena's consulting work continues to be informed by Marxist political theory.
Saxena sees no contradiction in being a wealthy Marxist. He is a theorist, not an activist, he said. "I'm not a Che Guevara," he said. "I'm not going to go sit in the jungle fighting. My analysis is basically a Marxist analysis of risk. I'm not a capitalist. I make money through sheer brain power."
However, reliable sources suggest that Saxena was (and remains) an active member and ideologue of the extremist Naxalite
Naxalite
The word Naxal, Naxalite or Naksalvadi is a generic term used to refer to various militant Communist groups operating in different parts of India under different organizational envelopes...
movement in the 1970s and he has continuted to support far-left parties in Nepal and in India, including the Maoist Communist Parties of India and Nepal.
Bangkok Bank of Commerce
In 1989, Saxena became advisor to Krirk-kiat Jalichandra, new senior vice-president of Bangkok Bank of Commerce. The bank tried hostile takeovers against many of the large Thai companies that traded publicly on the stock exchange. According to later investigation, it also gave cheap loans to various public officials and politicians in India, Russia, Thailand, Sinagapore, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.Bangkok Bank of Commerce collapsed in 1996 and the Bank of Thailand
Bank of Thailand
- History :The Bank of Thailand was first set up as the Thai National Banking Bureau. The Bank of Thailand Act was promulgated on 28 April 1942 vesting upon the Bank of Thailand the responsibility for all central banking functions...
took it over. The collapse contributed to the Asian financial recession, economic and political crisis and the 1997 devaluation of the baht. Saxena was at his residence in Prague or Zurich at the time the story broke, and he never returned to Thailand.
In June 1996, Thai authorities charged Saxena, Krikkiat Jalichandre, Rajan Pillai and Adnan Khashoggi and a number of other people with embezzling money estimated to be worth $US2.2 billion (or according to other estimates, $US88 million). Saxena himself had allegedly siphoned off £300 million in 1992-1993 through a string of derivative transactions. Saxena said that he was just an advisor and a trader and that the collapse of the real estate markets was the real trigger of the recession. His relationship with Russian tycoons and Arab sheikhs continues to be a subject of speculation.
Detention in Canada
The Royal Canadian Mounted PoliceRoyal Canadian Mounted Police
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police , literally ‘Royal Gendarmerie of Canada’; colloquially known as The Mounties, and internally as ‘The Force’) is the national police force of Canada, and one of the most recognized of its kind in the world. It is unique in the world as a national, federal,...
arrested Saxena on July 7, 1996 at Whistler, British Columbia
Whistler, British Columbia
Whistler is a Canadian resort town in the southern Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains in the province of British Columbia, Canada, approximately north of Vancouver...
, on behest of the Thai police. He was initially imprisoned for 2–3 days in a Canadian pre-trial centre. Saxena resisted extradition
Extradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
, claiming that he would be killed if he would return to Thailand.
In February 1998, Saxena was put on bail of $2.5 million because he was regarded as a flight risk. British Columbia Supreme Court overturned this ruling on June 24, 1998, allowing him to resist extradition in Vancouver, under his own guards in an effective house arrest
House arrest
In justice and law, house arrest is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to his or her residence. Travel is usually restricted, if allowed at all...
at his own expense. On September 4, 1998 Thailand asked authorities in 22 countries to freeze his assets, which, at the time, amounted to $135–300 million. Thailand also filed a civil suit against him.
In September 2005, the lower Canadian court ruled that Saxena should be extradited but the government of Canada did not enforce this ruling. Saxena further delayed his extradition with appeals. On October 21, 2005, the Canadian court postponed Saxena's extradition once again until January 2006.
On March 3, 2006 Saxena lost his B.C. Court of Appeal bid to overturn the federal justice minister's order that he be surrendered to Thai authorities, despite his contention that he could be killed or tossed in an inhumane prison cell in Thailand. Saxena's lawyer appealed. One of the possible reasons cited for him being released was the recent coup d’état in Thailand, which ousted the internationally recognized government, thus causing significant turmoil for the crown.
On October 29, 2009 the Supreme Court of Canada
Supreme Court of Canada
The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest court of Canada and is the final court of appeals in the Canadian justice system. The court grants permission to between 40 and 75 litigants each year to appeal decisions rendered by provincial, territorial and federal appellate courts, and its decisions...
denied Saxena’s hearing request regarding a lower-court decision upholding his extradition. The Supreme Court gave no reason for its decision. Later that day, Saxena was turned over to Thai authorities and left Canada for Thailand.
Business with Sierra Leone
A military coup ousted president Ahmad Tejan KabbahAhmad Tejan Kabbah
Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah served as President of Sierra Leone from 1996 to 1997 and again from 1998 to 2007.He worked for the United Nations Development Programme and returned to Sierra Leone in 1992...
of Sierra Leone in May 1997. Kabbah fled to Guinea
Guinea
Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...
and set up a government in exile
Government in exile
A government in exile is a political group that claims to be a country's legitimate government, but for various reasons is unable to exercise its legal power, and instead resides in a foreign country. Governments in exile usually operate under the assumption that they will one day return to their...
. Around July 1997 he contacted British mercenary Tim Spicer
Tim Spicer
Timothy Simon Spicer, OBE is a British former army officer, current CEO of the private security company Aegis Defence Services. He is a veteran of the Falklands War and also served with the British Army in Northern Ireland...
of the Sandline International
Sandline International
Sandline International was a private military company based in London, established in the early 1990s. It was involved in conflicts in Papua New Guinea in 1997 causing the Sandline affair, in 1998 in Sierra Leone and in Liberia in 2003 Sandline International was a private military company based...
to organize a counter-coup. Saxena agreed to finance the countercoup in exchange for diamond
Diamond
In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...
exploration permits.
According to the British Parliament's Report of the Sierra Leone Arms Investigation, Saxena would raise the money so that Sandline could hire soldiers and buy equipment. In return, Kabbah would give Saxena's companies permits for diamond exploration and promises of further business. Saxena would pay Sandline for their operations. However, someone leaked the relevant documents to The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
. In an interview the same year Kabbah denied knowledge of any negotiations with Saxena.
According to Spicer, who testified for the Report, Saxena did not give them the funds he had promised; reports have contradicted Spicer on this issue. Sandline bought more weapons from Bulgaria but they were too late - Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
n-lead troops loyal to Kabbah had already seized the capital. As a result, Saxena did not receive the permits. Later British government investigation confirmed that Kabbah had not told the whole truth. In later interview Saxena claimed that he wanted to help for "ideological reasons" and the last thing on his mind was owning mines in Africa.
General Commerce Bank
Rakesh Saxena was, until recently, allegedly fraudulently active in Britain (West Shore Ventures), South Africa in 2004 (Platinum Asset Management) and then Botswana (Investor Relations), South Africa (Phoenix Capital Partners), as the Sunday Standard and had revealed in August 2005. It is now known whether Saxena owned the African companies or not.Adnan Khashoggi, Oleg Boiko, Rakesh Saxena, Amador Pastrana, and Regis Possino, a lawyer believed to be the chief architect of the General Commerce Bank transaction, together acquired General Commerce Bank, in Vienna Austria, from where they allegedly organized international stock and bond deals. Associated with Possino were Sheman Mazur and Raoul Berthamieu, from the U.S. Possino and Khashoggi were credited with raising over $65 million for Genesis International, prior to the selling of the shares being halted by the SEC. Neither Possino nor Khashoggi were implicated in any wrongdoing in that regard.
Victims came from many countries, including Australia, Britain, and South Africa. Again Saxena's exact role has never been determined in many of these transactions. His name never showed up in any ownership documents. The Austrian government has not charged him with anything. One reason may well be that, in many instances, it is believed, that parties involved in international deals pay Saxena simply to have him on side. Saxena is not averse to shorting stocks. According to one of India's biggest power brokers, Chandraswami
Chandraswami
Chandraswami is a controversial Indian tantrik . He is called a Godman by some people. His father came from Bahrod in Rajasthan and worked as a money lender. He moved to Hyderabad when Chandraswami was a child. Chandraswami was attracted to the study of Tantra from an early age...
(also Nemi Chand Jain), Saxena is not averse to greenmail-type attacks on deals in progress, and due to his extensive knowledge of the markets (financial, economic and political), his reach is daunting, but his name is not on the paperwork. One senior Indian cabinet minister also alleged that Saxena is making options and futures prices on speculative Indian shares from offshore jurisdictions and that he is the price maker "of last recourse" for speculators in Mumbai.
Reports suggest that Saxena from his residence conducts several questionable and high-profile deals around the world, primarily deals in the exotic world of third world debt and derivatives; many such deals are, until now, outside the regulatory umbrellas and are likely to remain so for many more years.
Mr. Saxena and his company Westshore Ventures were sued by Pacific Energy & Mining Company of Reno, Nevada in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada for fraud and conspiracy to defraud Pacific Energy of over 1.5 million dollars. Pacific Energy had also filed a criminal complaint with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, however, the proceedings were stopped due to the extradition of Mr. Saxena to Thailand.
Since Mr. Saxena's extradition to Thailand, no additional securities frauds have been perpetrated by Mr. Saxena.
Recent developments
In August 2006, the Thai government set up a new team to seize the rest of Saxena's assets overseas, targeting those in Canada. Then Minister Chidchai Wannasathit ordered the Anti-Money Laundering Office and the Royal Thai Police to help the Attorney-General in this task. Canadian Appeals court denied his request for bail. [Bail was granted later].Rakesh Saxena was also a defendant in number of Civil Lawsuits in United States, including in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada; he won those cases or those cases simply faded away.
Charges Against Saxena
Saxena has been accused of many things but has not convicted of anything as of yet.In India, Saxena has been accused of culpable homicide
Culpable homicide
Culpable homicide is a specific offence in various jurisdictions within the Commonwealth of Nations which involves the illegal killing of a person either with or without an intention to kill depending upon how a particular jurisdiction has defined the offence...
, extortion
Extortion
Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...
, uttering death threat
Death threat
A death threat is a threat of death, often made anonymously, by one person or a group of people to kill another person or groups of people. These threats are usually designed to intimidate victims in order to manipulate their behavior, thus a death threat is a form of coercion...
s and cheating in the death of biscuit tycoon Rajan Pillai. Those allegations were laid after the tycoon's widow accused Saxena and three others of conspiring to kill her husband. Pillai was introduced to Saxena by some prominent Indian power brokers, including Chandraswani. The tycoon's widow, former model Nina Pillai, was considered very close to Saxena by people who saw her often at Saxena's Bangkok residence. Former bank officials in Thailand have claimed that Nina Pillai continued to be financed by Saxena after her husband's death.
The Government of Thailand accuse Saxena embezzling $88 million from the Bangkok Bank of Commerce (BBC) and seeks his extradition from Canada. The bank has separately filed civil proceedings against Saxena. He has filed a counter-suit.
The collapse of the BBC was one of the first dominoes in a financial crisis that spread across Asia, shaking the world economy in 1997. While some blame Saxena for sparking the inferno - The Wall Street Journal described him as the "Mrs. Leary's cow of the global financial crisis" - he is not facing court action on that score. He is also linked to some of the major hedge fund problems of the late 1990s, particularly problems linked to third world bonds and leveraged currency and interest rate derivative
Interest rate derivative
An interest rate derivative is a derivative where the underlying asset is the right to pay or receive a notional amount of money at a given interest rate...
s on such bonds and to problems now associated with Russian and East Europe privatizations of the Yeltsin era.
No charges were laid in the ill-fated Sierra Leone affair. The British Parliament's Report of the Sierra Leone Arms Investigation concluded that the purchase of weapons with Saxena's money only technically broke a United Nations embargo and that Canada was not yet enforcing the embargo.
External links
- http://nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/read.php?newsid=30088091
- AsiaWeek about Saxena
- Adnan Khashoggi, Rakesh Saxena and the Spiderweb
- http://www.indo.net.id/mbs/rakesh_saxena_constitutive_element_of_an_international_business_conspiracy.htm
- http://oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/5453373/
- http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11361
- http://finance.sympatico.msn.ca/investing/news/businessnews/article.aspx?cp-documentID=5922599
- http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/sep/01us4.htm
- http://www.rediff.com/business/1998/sep/05spl.htm
- http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/web1/06mar06/inter.htm#1
- http://www.thaindian.com/latest/thailand-to-seizure-assets-of-rakesh-saxena.html
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