Court lifts veil on fraudulent diamond investment scheme; $2.38m in damages awarded

A three-year-long legal battle involving Singaporean Karan Chandur Tilani and a fraudulent multimillion-dollar diamond investment deal has been made public after the Court of Appeal recently dismissed his bid to keep court records confidential.

The documents detail an arbitration case where the judge found that Mr Tilani, 32, had defrauded an investor over the value of a 2.08 carat “fancy vivid blue” diamond ring, and ordered that damages amounting to about $2.38 million be paid as compensation.

The arbitrator, Justice Lai Siu Chiu, found that Mr Tilani had made false claims about the diamond ring that was named after British-born actress Jane Seymour, including that the “Jane Seymour diamond” was naturally mined and worth around $13.8 million.

Court papers noted those false claims were the basis for Dutch investor Maarten Hein Bernard Koedijk’s decision to enter into a number of deals with Mr Tilani.

Justice Lai found that the diamond was synthetic and that Mr Tilani had bought it off the shelf for US$19,136 (S$25,700).

The legal dispute began in 2021 when Mr Tilani, who is a director and former majority shareholder of Fantastic Xperience (FXPL), sold nearly 50 per cent of the company’s shares to Mr Koedijk.

For the transaction, Mr Tilani said he received $648,601 in cash from Mr Koedijk, and accepted part of the payment in cryptocurrency, valued at $2 million.

Mr Tilani claimed that Mr Koedijk owed him an outstanding $339,659, which he refused to pay. This prompted the Singaporean to begin arbitration proceedings.

Mr Koedijk countered by asserting that the deal was not an outright purchase of the company’s shares.

Instead, he said Mr Tilani had proposed a fractional ownership investment scheme to him and other investors, where they could own a certain percentage of the Jane Seymour diamond ring at an agreed price.

The ring, which Mr Tilani said was owned by FXPL, would eventually be sold and the investors or co-owners given part of the sale proceeds.

Mr Tilani had come up with a plan for Mr Koedijk to temporarily hold the company’s shares while he arranged for the gem to be sold to the friend of an uncle, citing what he said was concern about a “conflict of interest”, the court papers said.

This plan saw Mr Koedijk depositing cryptocurrency worth US$2 million with Mr Tilani as security on the assurance that the latter would not access it.

Justice Lai went on to dismiss Mr Tilani’s claims and ordered him to pay compensation to Mr Koedijk – up until this point, the arbitration was confidential as court documents were sealed.

This changed after Mr Tilani responded to Mr Koedijk’s statutory demand for payment and attached the sealed documents in his legal response to the Dutchman. This meant that the previously confidential arbitration proceedings were now in the public record.

Mr Tilani applied on July 12, 2024, for the documents to be sealed again, arguing that revealing the arbitration findings would damage his reputation and business.

This was dismissed by the apex court. The Court of Appeal judges noted how confidentiality had already been compromised when Mr Tilani disclosed details of the arbitration in the statutory demand proceedings, which were made in open court, without the protection of a sealing order.

Documents from the arbitration case showed how Mr Tilani had sought to get Mr Koedijk to invest in the diamond.

Mr Tilani presented promotional materials to investors, including Mr Koedijk, and included an article from Forbes which falsely described the diamond as a rare natural gem.

Even so, Mr Tilani denied having represented the diamond as naturally mined. He said the Forbes article was included in his fractional ownership forms to all investors to show that the piece of jewellery was a “celebrity ring”.

The diamond ring had previously been in the news.

It was the centrepiece of a $2 million luxury dining experience that Mr Tilani had marketed and sought buyers for.

Media outlets – including the South China Morning Post, Forbes, CNBC and CNA Luxury – reported that Mr Tilani had donated the ring to the 2020 event, an 18-course dinner served by a celebrity chef on a private jet cruising above Singapore, and that the proceeds would support humanitarian efforts in Nigeria.

Singaporean Vincent Hee was reported to have paid for the experience, and the ring was served together with the meal.

Arbitration findings later revealed significant discrepancies in these claims.

Justice Lai highlighted that the value of the diamond ring was vastly inflated based on unscientific and arbitrary expert valuations provided by Mr Tilani’s expert witness.

She pointed out that the expert’s attempt to compare laboratory-grown diamonds to naturally mined diamonds like the Farnese Blue – a legendary gem owned by the Queen of Spain in the 1700s – was flawed, and deemed such comparisons “a mockery”.

Mr Tilani was also said to have perpetuated the falsehood through the Forbes article in a deliberate strategy to mislead investors, said the judge.

Justice Lai also questioned whether FXPL even owned the ring, which was sold as part of the $2 million luxury dining experience in 2020. No independent evidence was presented to confirm FXPL’s ownership of the ring, apart from Mr Tilani’s testimony, said the judge.

She ultimately declared the sale and purchase agreement between Mr Tilani and Mr Koedijk void, concluding that the Dutch investor had been misled into the deal by fraudulent representations.

The judge ordered Mr Tilani to refund Mr Koedijk the sum of $648,601 and for Mr Koedijk to transfer the FXPL shares back to Mr Tilani.

Mr Tilani also had to pay damages of about $2.38 million to Mr Koedijk and legal and arbitration costs totalling more than $500,000.

This is not the first time Mr Tilani made the news. In 2021, The Straits Times reported that the police were investigating reports of alleged fraud in FXPL’s diamond investment scheme.

A police spokesman told The Straits Times on Nov 19 that after careful consideration of the facts and circumstances of that case and in consultation with the Attorney-General’s Chambers, they had decided to take no further action against Mr Tilani after investigations concluded in 2021.

Source: Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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