Foreigners came seeking paradise; they’re now in a complicated legal hell
Last December, Nicholas Papa and Michael Cooper got an early Christmas present: A show cause notice from the Directorate of Enforcement (DoE). It carried two messages: Your home may soon be confiscated; you will be fined three times the land’s value.
Mick and Nick have faced endless buck-passing. When they went to the Reserve Bank of India, they were passed on to the DoE. Who sent them back to the RBI. RBI rules state they cannot repatriate any money from the sale of their house. So they would have to exhaust the funds in India and go back to the UK with nothing.
Correction: This article has been updated. Dayanand Narvekar is no longer the Law Minister now, as was mentioned earlier.
(This story appears in the 20 November, 2009 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)