Rakesh Saxena

Rakesh Saxena (born 13 July 1952, at Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India) is an Indian convicted criminal, financier and trader in the derivatives market.

Rakesh Saxena was born 13 July 1952 in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India.

As a child he studied in England, because his mother was an international lawyer.

He later lived in New Delhi, India and studied at St Columba's School, and St. Stephen's College.

In the late-1970s, Saxena moved to Hong Kong, where he met his wife, a Thai national.

While in university he developed strong Marxist political leanings and by 1974 he graduated with a Master of Arts degree in English.

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, made many fraud deals and put the bank to around 4 crore loss before the Indian government nationalized it.

In Hong Kong, he worked as a foreign exchange dealer in Kowloon in the 1980s, 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.

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, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.

He is accused of embezzlement in the 1990s from his work as treasury adviser to the Bangkok Bank of Commerce (BBC) and is widely reputed to have been engaged in dozens of high risk ventures and deals throughout the world over the previous three decades.

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.

Bangkok Bank of Commerce collapsed in 1996 and the Bank of Thailand took it over.

In June 1996, Thai authorities charged Rakesh 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).

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested Saxena on 7 July 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.

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 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 24 June 1998.

This ruling allowed him to resist extradition in Vancouver, using his own guards in what amounted to a self-financed house arrest, costing him $40,000 per month.

On 4 September 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 21 October 2005, the Canadian court postponed Saxena's extradition once again until January 2006.

On 3 March 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.

Saxena filed his appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada through the offices of Amandeep Singh, known for representing clients in such internationally intriguing cases as the Extradition of Omid Tahvili, a fugitive who was on the Interpol's Top Ten Most Wanted persons list and part of the defence of the Air India Bombing Trial.

In October 2009, he was deported to Thailand after fighting the longest extradition battle in Canadian history, which lasted 13 years.

In June 2012 Saxena was jailed for 10 years by Bangkok South Criminal Court, and ordered to pay US$41 million in fines and compensation, after being convicted five counts of securities fraud between 1992 and 1995.