Chinnakannan Sivasankaran owns sprawling island manor off the coast of Vancouver that the BC government said was linked directly to an alleged criminal conspiracy at a state-run Indian bank. Sivasankaran transferred its ownership to tax-haven company while subject to an asset freeze as creditors from India chased him through courts in the U.K., India and the Seychelles.

VANCOUVER – An accused Indian corporate fraudster has been exposed in the BC dirty money probe into real estate.  

Chinnakannan Sivasankaran owns sprawling island manor off the coast of Vancouver that the BC government said was linked directly to an alleged criminal conspiracy at a state-run Indian bank. Sivasankaran transferred its ownership to tax-haven company while subject to an asset freeze as creditors from India chased him through courts in the U.K., India and the Seychelles.

A six-month investigation commissioned by the govt of British Columbia had scoured more than a million land titles for signs of illicit funds swirling through Canada’s most expensive housing market. While thousands of properties were flagged as suspect, almost all fell short of clear criminal links.

Save one, according to the probe’s final report. “Most astonishingly,” Attorney General David Eby declared at a press conference when it was presented, “a $3.5 million (US $2.6 million) Gulf Island property acquired with funds allegedly embezzled from a $90 million loan fraud in India.”

But despite Sivasankaran  transferring the property to a company he controls in a tax haven known to be used by criminals and fraudsters, reports say there is little evidence to show the mansion was bought with criminal proceeds – they claim it was purchased by an Indian entrepreneur long before he faced the accusations of fraud.

A trail of documents reveals that the property’s been linked since 2005 to Sivasankaran, who transferred its ownership while subject to an asset freeze as creditors chased him through courts in the U.K., India and the Seychelles.

Sivasankaran declined to be interviewed in response to the B.C. claims the property may have been purchased with embezzled funds. He also declined to answer questions about whether he intended to use the property to settle some of his companies’ debts.

The property in question is glamping for the mega rich — a timber-and-glass cabin perched in a 26-acre wooded estate with views stretching to Mt. Baker in Washington state. It sits on the southern tip of Salt Spring Island, a halcyon haven of hippies, retirees, and vacation homes often owned by wealthy Americans. Land title records list the owner as Axcel Sunshine Ltd. — a British Virgin Islands-based shell that Indian investigators say is controlled by Sivasankaran and was used in an alleged fraud at Mumbai-based IDBI Bank Ltd.

According to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation and U.K. court filings, Sivasankaran and his deputies allegedly conspired with former IDBI executives to obtain an $83 million credit facility for Axcel in 2014 in order to pay off loans to other Siva Group companies that had soured — a practice known as “evergreening” that’s been common among Indian banks holding the world’s worst bad-loan ratio. Within that ignominious group, IDBI has the worst bad-loan ratio.

Of the $67 million that was actually disbursed to Axcel, the full amount has been accounted for — it was used to clear the dues of six Siva Group companies, according to the CBI.

Sivasankaran built a fortune starting in the 1980s by anticipating the wants of India’s aspirational consumers: cut-rate personal computers, mobile phones, a Starbucks-copycat named Barista. Siva Group, the sprawling conglomerate he founded, claimed annual revenues of $3 billion at one point.

Sivasankaran — better known as Siva – used an eponymous Bermuda-registered shell Siva Ltd. to buy the property for C$3.6 million in 2005, according to B.C. property records. His name and signature appear in land title documents nearly a decade later when the residence was transferred to Axcel.

Sivasankaran has proved slippery in the past: Bahraini telecom operator Batelco spent years chasing him through courts in the U.K., India and the Seychelles — where at some point he’d become a citizen — to pay a claim related to a failed joint venture.

A London court placed a worldwide freezing order on Sivasankaran and Siva Ltd.’s assets in July 2014. In an apparent violation of that order, within days, Sivasankaran had listed the Salt Spring property for sale and transferred it in a private transaction to Axcel, according to B.C. property records.

The property has been put on the market at least three times since 2011 for about $7 million. It’s never sold.