The message arrived on a winter morning as the year was winding up. I thought 2020 could hold no more surprises after the Covid-19 pandemic and the unravelling that followed. In my privileged seclusion, I was working on the last chapters of this book when the phone beeped: ‘When I highlighted this ten years ago, no one bothered.’

Attached was a newspaper report about the latest Indian business family to flee the country after taking massive loans against non-existent businesses. The sender of this message, a successful petrochemical trader, had walked into my life more than a decade ago after a distress call detailing harassment at the hands of this business family. If I am to be honest, it took me a while to fully trust him. I had to hear his story a few times over, read hundreds of documents and meet other victims of the harassment. To begin with, I had thought he was hallucinating.

He claimed that he was hired to expand the petrochemical trading business of a Delhi-based company, owned by the business family, only to discover that the business was expanding into nowhere. Then he stumbled upon the company’s dark secrets: its true business was money laundering, the circular trade of diamonds and other shady dealings.

He wrote detailed whistle-blower accounts to Indian investigation agencies and banks. All of these complaints soon landed up with his company management or were ignored. Then began the harassment.

After our story was published, partial normalcy was restored in their lives.

A decade later, here was my contact again, drawing my attention to another twist in the drama. The business family, like several others, disappeared from India after taking out hundreds of crores from Indian banks. When the family’s questionable deals were exposed a decade ago by my contact, the police and other investigation agencies rushed to its rescue. Eventually, the family ran out of all options and quietly slipped away to safer shores. The Indian security establishment, and many banking officials, were enablers of family’s corrupt and criminal enterprise, its final escape.

In many ways, this story is the essence of what this book document