Four members of the Hinduja family were sentenced to up to four and a half years in prison after a Swiss court found that they had exploited domestic workers at their Geneva villa. The criminal court, however, acquitted the billionaire’s family members charged of illegal human trafficking of their servants, primarily illiterate Indians.
According to the Associated Press, none of the four family members appeared in the Geneva court. However, the family’s business manager, Najib Ziazi, attended the proceedings and received an 18-month suspended sentence.
Charges were brought against four Hinduja family members: Prakash, Kamal, Ajay, and Namrata. They were accused of smuggling in many Indian labourers, seizing their passports, and making them work 16-hour shifts without receiving overtime compensation at the villa. The Hindujas’ attorneys have refuted the accusations.
The Hinduja family is in charge of a global conglomerate that has significant holdings in banking, oil and gas, real estate, automobile manufacturing, and health care. The family was named Britain’s richest family by The Sunday Times of London, which recently calculated their net worth to be 37 billion pounds, or $47 billion.
According to reports in the Swiss media, the chief prosecutor, Yves Bertossa, said during the opening arguments of the widely followed trial on June 10 that the family had allocated more money for a pet than for the wage of a single domestic helper.
According to the initial indictment, some domestic servants received as low as 10,000 rupees per month, or around $120. Many of the workers, it was stated, were from impoverished families in India and had worked “from dawn until late in the evening” without receiving overtime compensation.
According to the accusation, their salaries, which were far less than Geneva’s minimum wage for domestic workers, were sent into Indian bank accounts that they found difficult to access.
The Hinduja family, according to the prosecution, was accused of seizing the domestic workers’ passports and ordering them not to leave the property, where they slept in a basement chamber without windows on bunk beds.
According to the accusation, the personnel were required to remain available at all times, even when they travelled to France and Monaco to work in similar environments.
The Hinduja family’s attorney, Romain Jordan, dismissed the accusations as “exaggerated and biased.” In a statement released on Wednesday, he stated, “The members of the Hinduja family vigorously deny these allegations and remain determined to defend themselves.”
(With inputs from agencies)