Raj Bagri quits UK House of Lords

LONDON: Lord Raj Bagri, the Indian-origin Conservative peer, has resigned from the House of Lords, becoming the fifth member to quit to avoid becoming a resident in the UK for tax purposes.
Their resignations followed the introduction of the law stipulating that in order to sit in either house of parliament, people should be registered in the UK for tax purposes.

Thousands of people with roots or links outside the UK declare themselves as 'non-domicile' for tax purposes, which allows them not to be taxed on income earned outside the UK, and if that income is not brought to the UK.

The law was introduced in the wake of the mystery over the tax status of the Tory donor and deputy chair of the Conservative party Lord Ashcroft.

Lord Bagri, 79, has been a Conservative peer since 1997. A businessman, Bagri was Chairman of the London Metal Exchange until 2002. He was awarded the CBE in 1995.
He is a also member of the Advisory Committee of The Prince's Trust and Chairman of the Bagri Foundation.

Other four peers who resigned are Lord Foster, Lady Dunn, Lord McAlpine and Lord Laidlaw.

In April, when the law banning people with non-domicile tax status from parliament was passed, peers were given three months to comply with the new rules or leave.
A House of Lords official confirmed the departing peers will retain their titles for life despite no longer having access to parliament or debates.

Bagri, former chairman of the London Metal Exchange, is one of the five peers who have decided to quit rather than give up their non-domicile status.
The issue of non-doms has dogged the Tories for years, following concern that wealthy peers were influencing British laws even though they did not pay full tax here.
A British citizen can register for non-dom status by showing strong affiliation with another country where they were either born or where their parents were born.
They must also show an intention to leave the UK at some point - effectively giving them "temporary" tax status.

Non-doms must spend no more than 183 days in a tax year in the UK, or visit the country less than 91 days on average per year over a four year period.
There are an estimated 120,000 non-doms in the UK. They include Indian steel tycoons, Greek shipping magnates, Russian oligarchs and many workers at City banks, hedge funds and private equity firms.

Lead NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul gave up his non-dom status, though it costs him a lot of money.

Lord Bagri began his career as a 15-year-old apprentice metal trader in Kolkata and went on to set up Minmetco after he came to Britain as a 19-year-old.

He has a 50 million-pound home in London's Regent's Park and a home in India.

He is one of the governors of the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

UK academy honors NRI professor at Oxford

LONDON: Aditi Lahiri, the Indian-origin Professor of Linguistics at the University of Oxford, has been elected Fellow of the British Academy, the national academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Lahiri, who researches phonology, phonetics, historical linguistics, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, is among eight Oxford academics to be elected Fellow of the academy.
She received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2000.

In 2009, Prof Lahiri was awarded the Professor Sukumar Sen Memorial Gold Medal from the West Bengal governor at the annual meeting of the Asiatic Society in Kolkata.

Prof Lahiri is the first Chair of the newly formed Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics at Oxford, which launched on August 1, 2008.

Pharma tycoon conferred honorary degree

LEICESTER: Vijay Patel, a pharmaceutical tycoon and one of the richest Britons of Indian origin, was conferred an honorary degree by the De Montfort University here for his "many achievements in business, nationally and internationally."

Senior lecturer in business at De Montfort, Robert Webber, said: "This is in honor of Dr Patel's many achievements in business, nationally and internationally. It is a great pleasure to be honoring him in this way."

Patel, who was awarded an honorary degree in business administration, said: "I had a dream to start my business when I was just 10 years old but I never dared to tell anyone. I never imagined this would happen, though, and I am so deeply humbled to be honored by the university in this way."

The head of Waymade Healthcare, a global pharmaceuticals company, is worth nearly 400 million pounds - it had crossed the 500 million-mark before the recession - and has featured in the Sunday Times Rich List for over a decade now.

Born in Eldoret in Kenya, Patel was brought up in one room with his brother, Bhikhu. Their father died when Patel was six and the boys were brought up by their mother, who eked out a living as a schoolteacher.

At the age of 16, he arrived in Leicester with just five pounds and a high school education.

Patel, now 60, said childhood poverty was a big motivator. "I never want to go back to living in poverty."
To put himself through sixth form and university, he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, grill chef, laborer and barman.

After graduating from the College of Pharmacy from De Montfort - then called Leicester Polytechnic -- he set about trying to raise finance to open a chemist's shop.
"I was Asian, I had no experience, I had no collateral and nobody wanted to give me money."

Eventually an uncle stepped in and offered to be a guarantor on a loan for 6,000 pounds. Patel opened his first pharmacy in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in 1975. By 1982, he owned six shops and sales had doubled.

By that time his brother, Bhikhu, an architect by training, had joined the company to give it some financial discipline. In 1984, they founded Waymade Healthcare and sold all but three of their pharmacies to focus on turning Waymade into a global venture.

Today, Waymade Healthcare has more than 1,000 licences for prescription medicines and sells to more than 100 countries. Sister company Amdipharm is developing drugs with markets too small to interest the giant pharmaceutical firms.

Jayant Patel appeals conviction in Australia

SYDNEY: Jayant Patel, an Indian origin doctor sentenced to seven years in prison for manslaughter and causing grievous bodily harm on patients at an Australian hospital, Thursday appealed against his sentence and conviction.

His lawyers lodged the papers in the Queensland Court of Appeal late Thursday afternoon, Australian news agency AAP reported.
Dubbed "Dr Death", Patel was sentenced July 1 to seven years for each case of manslaughter and three years for grievous bodily harm. The sentences are to be served concurrently.
Patel was chief of surgery at Bundaberg Base Hospital between 2003 and 2005.

Indian-born and US-trained, Patel had pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter of James Phillips, 46, Gerry Kemps, 77, and Mervyn Morris, 75, who died following surgery performed by him.
He had also pleaded not guilty to causing grievous bodily harm to Ian Vowles, whose healthy bowel he removed in October 2004.

The trial involved the evidence of 76 witnesses over 53 days.

The prosecution had alleged that Phillips, Kemps and Morris would not have died but for Patel's decision to operate.

The surgeries on them were all "dangerous, unnecessary and inappropriate", the court was told.

The prosecution went on to state that the operations on the three men should not have been done at Bundaberg as the hospital did not have the resources to cope with such major surgeries.
Patel's barrister Michael Byrne told the jury that Patel had performed the operations the benefit of his patients. He said that each operation had been carried out with the patient's consent.

Indian cabbie sentenced for sexually assaulting teenager in Australia

MELBOURNE: A 34-year old Indian cabbie was on Tuesday handed out a suspended jail term of 10-months on charges of sexually assaulting a drunken teenager in Australia last year.
A Brisbane district court heard that Indian driver Harmeet Singh sexually assaulted the 18-year-old after picking her up in his taxi from Brisbane's Fortitude Valley in the early hours of November 14 last year.

Singh pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault as the court heard that the abuse took place after the young woman realized she did not have the money for the fare. The court was told that the cabbie kissed his passenger and offered her money for sex when she disclosed that she could not pay the fare.

Giving the sentence, Judge Milton Griffin said Singh had "a high degree of responsibility as a taxi driver" to ensure the safety of passengers. "What you did was in fact quite the opposite," he said.

Media reports said that Singh dropped the girl off some distance from her home but soon returned and offered to drive her the rest of the way. However, he instead turned the cab around and stopped a short time later when she started crying.

Singh then kissed her and then put his hand under her dress, before offering her money and telling her to get in the back of the taxi.

The teenager then got out of the car and ran home and filed a complaint with police two days later. Singh initially denied assaulting her and told police she had offered sexual favors in lieu of her fare. The court was told that Singh, who is living in Australia on a spouse visa, had lost his job as a result of his behavior.

Three Indian-origin businessmen given clean chit in Nigeria

ABUJA: Three Indian-origin businessmen associated with Stallion group of companies have been given a clean chit by Nigerian government after facing court charges and deportation for alleged tax evasion and expatriate quota abuse.

Three brothers of Indian parentage Sunil, Mahesh and Haresh Vaswani have been finally cleared and to continue with their business activities in the oil rich African country.

The government, through the office of the attorney-general, Mohammed Bello Adoke has ordered the customs and immigration services to comply with court orders against their being prosecuted for tax evasion and deportation.

The brothers faced court charges and deportation for alleged tax evasion and expatriate quota abuse. The Vaswanis engage in different businesses which include agribusiness, large-scale rice milling/farming, commodities, food, automobiles, spinning/textiles, polythene packaging, motor vehicle and motor cycle assembly.

They also deal in industrial/household plastics, steel, fertilizer, chemicals, real estate and banking with the name Stallion Group.

They were dragged before a court by the country's anti-corruption police, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and deported by the country's immigration last year.
But two federal high courts ruled in their favor differently in September and November describing the allegations against the businessmen who now hold British passports as irregular.

The order also nullified the deportation order however there was no immediate executive pronouncement on this as Nigerian authorities are often known to flout court orders. The brothers were first deported for tax evasion during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, but they came back in 2008.

Haneef sues Australian govt over unlawful arrest

MELBOURNE: Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef, who was wrongly accused of involvement in a botched 2007 UK terror attack, on Thursday sued the Australian government for unlawful arrest and abuse of power and launched defamation proceedings against former immigration minister Kevin Andrews.

30-year-old Haneef's lawyer Maurice Blackburn said the suit was lodged on behalf of Haneef in Brisbane Supreme Court. He said a claim has been made for unlawful arrest and abuse of power against the Commonwealth government.

Haneef's legal team launched defamation proceedings against the then John Howard government's immigration minister Kevin Andrews, AAP reported. Haneef, who was working as a registrar at Gold Coast Hospital, was arrested in July 2007 at Brisbane airport after his cellphone SIM card was linked to a failed terror attack in Britain that year.

He was held for 12 days before being charged with giving support to a terrorist organization. However, Haneef was later cleared of charges as prosecutors admitted to bungling the case and conceded there was insufficient evidence.

Sikh's turban ban not racism: New Zealand club

AUCKLAND: Members of a New Zealand club that denied a Sikh man's entry because he was wearing a turban say the issue has nothing to do with racism and they are ready to defend their rules in court.

The Sikh Council of New Zealand is seeking action from Human Rights Commission against the south Auckland's Manurewa Cosmopolitan Club after volunteer worker Karnail Singh was barred entry because his turban breached its no-headwear policy.

The issue was not one of racism, said Con Linton, a member since the late 1960s. He said the 3,500-member club has members belonging to different culture including Asian, Iraqi, Pacific Island, Pakeha and Maori.

"You could possibly stereotype us and say we are rednecks with people who do not like turbans but that would be democracy at its worst. Where it (the headwear policy) originated I don't know but people have never found it hard to conform with - until lately," he said.

Several club members said that it "has access to barristers and solicitors like anyone else" and will fight any moves to enforce changes, The New Zealand Herald reported.

"To me it would appear the feeling is quite clear that we are a private club with its own rules much like many other clubs throughout the country," said Peter Kelly, a member for 43 years.
"But if there is an enforcement on this particular issue on the Manurewa Cossie club, it surely will have repercussions on other clubs and some of their rules in general. "I think we would fight - why wouldn't we?"

Sikh Council spokesman Verpal Singh believed at least one practicing member of the Sikh community had entered the club wearing a turban, but this was denied by the club's manager, Patricia Rangi.
"We had asked them to resolve this anomaly and bring their definition of headwear in line with the courts of law and RSAs and other cosmopolitan clubs which would not bring the turban under the curfew on headwear rules that they have," Singh said.

He refused to comment when asked if the issue was a case of intolerance towards other cultures.

[BY HEMA FERNANDO ]