New Delhi: Prem Chand Garg was once known as a rice trader. Then he gained a reputation for things other than rice trade.

Four years ago, he was named by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), one of India’s top investigation agencies, in an FIR alleging forgery, cheating, and conspiracy in connection with an alleged bank fraud of Rs 979 crores. Enforcement agencies separately accused him of importing gold illegally without paying customs duties. A lower court reportedly convicted and sentenced him to 7 years’ jail for illegal iron mining in Karnataka. He was accused by the Nigerian government of engineering a multi-million dollar bank fraud. He has an array of litigation about these and other cases, including at least one to defend his company against insolvency by bankers. He walked away from many companies that once anchored his trade empire.

Now, the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry, headed by cabinet minister Piyush Goyal, has partnered with Garg and a new non-profit company that Garg has founded along with his family and associates, to organise Modi government’s international summit, the Bharat International Rice Conference, on October 30-31 in Delhi.

Garg has also been appointed to the board of the government’s powerful Non-Basmati Rice Development Fund, as one of the three private trade representatives. The ministry has amended the regulations, making it mandatory for all private traders to register their annual export of thousands of crores worth of non-basmati rice with this fund and pay a fee per tonne before moving the goods. A position on the fund for a private player gives him a detailed oversight of the trade, including pricing data.

Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal claims that the Bharat International Rice Conference would determine the direction of the rice trade for the next five years. With Mr Garg’s new entity as co-host, Goyal’s ministry has invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to inaugurate it. The government is offering up to a thousand dollars and accommodation to foreign rice traders flying to India for the conference. Organisers say more than 1,000 foreign delegates will land up. The two-day gala event, co-hosted and helmed by Garg’s new organisation alongside the Union government, is expected to cater to 2,500 people and firms in the rice business.

The Union Ministry for Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution has also joined in as a funding partner to the event. Other government agencies and private bodies have signed up to be there. To the tiny but rich world of rice importers, Garg and his teammates will co-host the event alongside government departments, a role that has effectively positioned them as visible representatives within the sector comprising Indian rice producers, farmers, traders, and exporters. 

Garg’s entity, which the Commerce and Industry ministry has partnered with, is called the Indian Rice Exporters’ Federation (IREF). The ministry describes the company on the event website as “a national-level apex body representing the interests of Basmati and non-Basmati rice exporters across India. It serves as a unified platform for key stakeholders in the rice value chain—including exporters, millers, traders, logistics providers, and associated service sectors.”

Rice, the world’s third most-traded food commodity, is integral to the global food system, with four billion people depending on it for sustenance and income. It is important to India as well. India has been one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of rice, supplying to over 172 countries.

In 2024-25, India accounted for 28 percent of global output and contributed to 40% of the global rice trade. It exported 20.1 million metric tonnes of rice worth about $12.95 billion.

The Reporters’ Collective found that the fledgling non-profit company was registered in August 2023 by Mr Garg along with six other interlinked companies that have his relatives (including his son) and known associates from previous years on board.

With Garg and his new organisation endorsed by the government of India, we investigated how his and his associates’ businesses are faring and how they are interlinked with the prominent space he has established in the corridors of the Union government.

At the end of our investigation, we sent detailed and specific queries to Garg. He replied, “It has been observed that we have been receiving threats from certain anti-national elements emanating from foreign soils and supported by a few individuals in India. These elements have directly threatened to unleash a barrage of negative news articles against us prior to the Bharat International Rice Conference.”

He added, “Your instant email from its contents gives us reasons to doubt whether the same has also been issued at the behest of certain anti-national persons and that you are acting as an instrument to such persons. We also have reasons to believe that you have sent the captioned mail with an intent to defame me, the Federation and spread false, baseless and malicious information about The Bharat International Rice Conference.”

He denied any wrongdoing or any undue gain from his non-profit’s engagement in the event. Our questions to him and his response can be read in their entirety over here. 

The Union ministry of Commerce and Industry did not reply to emailed questions. 

But first, Mr Garg’s chequered past.

The Past Record

Since 1982, Garg has held varying business interests from shoes to the import of iron ore and export of agricultural products, particularly rice. However, things went south in the 2010s when authorities, including the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), brought several criminal charges against him and his associates.

Most of these cases are ongoing, The Reporters’ Collective confirmed.

Here is a quick summary of cases where he stands accused of crimes. These have been previously reported by the courts, government agencies, and the media over the years.

In 2021, the CBI accused Prem Garg and his wife of allegedly cheating a consortium of five banks, including the State Bank of India, of Rs 979.15 crore. Garg, and his wife Anita Garg, and their export business, Nutrionext Manufacturers Limited (previously called Shrilal Mahal Overseas Limited), were named as accused in the first information report. The case is ongoing.

Prem Garg, through his firm Lal Mahal Limited, was previously also accused and later convicted in an iron export scam of 2010.  A special court set up to deal with criminal cases involving MLAs and MPs of Karnataka held Garg guilty of being involved in the export of illegally extracted iron ore worth Rs 2,500 crore.

In the same mining scam, Garg accused the then CBI director of demanding a 15 crore bribe in argument for anticipatory bail. CBI counsel, in response, accused Garg of resorting to arm-twisting tactics. The court then denied anticipatory bail, observing that Garg had tried to evade legal notices and summons issued by the courts and the CBI.

In late 2016 and early 2017, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and police arrested Prem Chand Garg, his son Devashish Garg for allegedly smuggling duty-free gold. The media reported that the ED alleged that Garg and his associates evaded over 17 crores in customs duties. Currently, an investigation is ongoing under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

Garg has also been charged by Nigerian authorities alongside his son, Devashish Garg, for allegedly defrauding Ecobank Plc of an amount of around $4.2 million sometime in 2015. As the defendants have failed to appear in the ongoing court case, the Attorney General of Nigeria has been prompted to pursue an extradition warrant.

We could determine that in many of the above accusations and allegations of crime by government agencies and others, the cases are yet to reach a conclusive stage - passing all levels of appeal available to the accused. Finality in India’s long-winding legal system can take years, sometimes decades. Garg and the other co-accused continue to contest the allegations they face.

Responding to our queries on these cases and allegations against him, Prem Chand Garg said, “I wish to clarify that these matters are sub-judice before the Hon’ble Courts, and I have already been exonerated in most of them. It appears you have not conducted adequate research and may have been influenced by anti-national sources attempting to malign my reputation and that of the Federation.”

A Fresh Face for an Old Business

We next attempted to map Mr Garg, his family, and associates’ footprints in the corporate world of rice exports, trade, and shipping. This is unlikely to be an exhaustive map. But it is instructive.

We accessed corporate filings of companies using Tracxn, a commercial data aggregator of corporate and industry records. We generated the web of ownership and evolving business relations between Garg, his family members, his associates, and the companies. 

Over several decades, Prem Garg was associated with at least seventeen firms, serving either as a director or beneficiary in each. Over time, as he faced legal troubles, Garg dissolved his business associations with all of them. Some of these businesses got hit badly. For instance, Nutrionex Manufacturers Limited, which was alleged to be involved in a major criminal conspiracy case, is now fighting insolvency forced upon it by lending banks.

Of the original seventeen firms, at least ten are still active. However, Garg’s association with these companies has been terminated. He is also no longer a beneficiary or a shareholder in any of these companies. Most of these companies are registered at Bhagwan Dass Nagar, New Delhi, which is home to Garg’s family offices; the family residence is also in the neighbourhood.

His children, Isha Garg and Aditya Garg, now serve as directors in several of these firms, often alongside a few close business associates. When we studied the financial disclosures, we found that Prem Chand Garg’s name appeared as a shareholder in at least five of these ten companies in their original memorandum of association.

And while Prem Garg retains no significant holdings in businesses he established or managed earlier, including his rice business, he is now the National President of the Indian Rice Exporters’ Federation. A fact that his son, Aditya Garg, was quick to emphasise in his hostile interview with us. "My father has no associations with my firms; he presently heads a rice exporters’ federation," he said.

This is true. But the converse is not. The son’s company does have a stake in the federation that the elder Garg now leads, we found. 

Those Who Control and Own the Rice Exporters’ Federation

The Indian Rice Exporters’ Federation (IREF) was formed as a not-for-profit company in August 2023. On its website, it claims to be the voice of the Indian rice sector, with 7,700 member firms. In the financial year 2023-24, it collected membership fees of Rs 43.69 lakhs and another Rs 1.33 crore as voluntary donations from entities not listed out in its financial disclosures.

Corporate filings show Prem Chand Garg holds just one out of 1 lakh shares in the nonprofit company. Six other companies hold the rest of the shares in equal portions. These six companies are either associated with Garg’s family or are run by former partners or directors in businesses where Garg and his family once held a direct stake.

When the company was formed, Prem Chang Garg, holding just one share, was appointed by the shareholders as the “Permanent President of the National Executive Committee of the Company”, as revealed in the mandatory corporate filings submitted to the government.

Garg told us, “The post of National President is an elected, non-executive role, and all executive powers rest with the Federation Secretariat, which is run by professionals. The shareholders listed at the time of incorporation have no role in the functioning of the Federation.”

The company’s website lists a long list of advisors - many of them top retired government officers. It also lists a large ‘governing body’ drawing representatives from the private agro product companies. Garg is listed as the National President on it as well. 

The governing body’s members do not find much mention on the federation’s website. All the photographs and news articles on the site star Prem Chand Garg at the centre of the publicity material.

All the photographs in the gallery section of the federation’s website feature Prem Chand Garg. He is found posing multiple times with Piyush Goyal and with some other cabinet ministers of the Modi government, including Nitin Gadkari, Prahlad Joshi, and Chirag Paswan. In Indian politics and business, where scoring photographs with powerful people signals heft, Garg has on display his with the previous President of India, Ramnath Kovind and the current Delhi BJP chief minister as well.

We found, in the first year of its operation, that the company had paid only Rs 5,289 as salaries and wages. The financial records for the second year (FY 24-25) are not yet available in the public domain to evaluate.

The company secured a license from the government to operate as a non-profit. In such cases, the companies plough their profits back into the purpose they have been set up for, and shareholders are disallowed from taking any of it. In this case, the articles of association of the company allow shareholders to extract profit from the entity.

Vi Exports India Private Limited holds a sixth of the shares in Prem Chand Garg’s rice federation. Mr Garg’s son, Aditya Garg controls this firm, holding all but one equity share in Vi Exports. But on the papers of IREF, Pradeep Kumar has been appointed as the authorised signatory for Vi Exports shares in this rice federation. Pradeep Kumar merely holds one out of one lakh equity shares in Vi Exports, rest belonging to Prem Chand Garg’s son, Aditya.   

Vi Farm Organics Limited owns another sixth of the shares in the Prem Chand Garg-led federation. In this firm, Prem Garg’s other son, Devashish Garg, is a director and shareholder. Devashish is also the signatory for Vi Farm’s equity shares in the rice federation.

Both Aditya and Devashish’s companies are registered at B-5, Bhagwan Dass Nagar, New Delhi. These are the family offices for the Garg family, located close to their family home. Several firms started by Prem Garg or with whom he was closely associated are also based out of this address. We visited this address to confirm and met Aditya at his office.

In the next four firms, associations with Prem Chand Garg go back to his and his family’s previous roles.

Genomic Valley Biotech Limited owns a sixth of the shares in the association via its authorised signatory, Yogesh Agrawal. Yogesh Agrawal also serves as a director in Kannu Aditya (India) Limited, where several members of the Garg family have served as directors in the past, including Prem Chand Garg’s wife, Anita Garg; his daughter, Isha Garg; his son, Devashish Garg; and Prem Chand Garg himself.

Shri Lal Mahal Agro Products Private Limited owns a sixth of the shares in the industry association through its authorised signatory, Surendra Pal Singh. Surendra currently serves as a director at Shri Lal Mahal Agro Products, where several of those closely associated with Prem Garg served as directors in the past. This includes his wife, Anita Garg, and Har Narain Aggarwal, who has served as a director in at least half a dozen firms founded by Prem Garg or where he had a significant association as a director or beneficiary in the past.

Viraj Food Products Private Limited, which holds another sixth of the shares through its authorised signatory Jogender Pal — also had a member of the Garg family, Devashish Garg, serving as a director in the firm in the past.

Another former director of Viraj Food Products – Jagdish Prasad – is now the authorised signatory of a sixth of the rice association’s shares via the firm Gentek Generation Private Limited. Gentek Generation also had Mahesh Chander serve as a director in the firm in the past. Mahesh Chander currently serves as Director in three firms with Prem Chand’s daughter, Isha Garg.

This is the ownership of the non-profit company that Garg leads, and the commerce ministry has chosen to partner with, for its global outreach for exporting India’s rice, while Garg also mediates on the trade of non-basmati rice trade through a government fund and monitoring mechanism.

Prem Garg’s son, Aditya Garg’s company Vi Exports, is the most intriguing out of all shareholders in the federation. Set up around the same time his father Prem Garg started the federation for rice exporters, it has quickly cornered a good slice of the business of shipping rice from India, we found.

In the time that Prem Garg and his federation found endorsement from the Commerce Ministry, his son’s company, Vi Exports, also flourished. Legally speaking, they remain distinct legal entities with no evidence available of any illegal collusion or coordination between them.  

In India, it is quite usual for family members to be engaged in the same businesses through the same or separate legal entities, such as companies and limited liability partnerships. Legally, they remain disconnected while gaining an advantage from the social capital generated by the entire family’s connections and business. This is not illegal. It's a leg up.

So, we decided to inspect the records of Vi Exports in more detail.

The Business of Vi Exports India Private Limited

In India, Aditya Garg owns a majority share in Vi Exports, which was founded in 2020 and is now an equal owner of the father’s rice exporters’ federation nonprofit company. 

Vi Exports also owns all the shares of another company called Geneva Global Pte Limited, which is registered in Singapore. 

Geneva Global, along with another Indian proprietorship firm, Eximwala Solutions, owns a full controlling stake in yet another Singapore-registered company, Eximwala Solutions Pte Limited. In effect, Aditya Garg, through other firms and through a single share held directly, owns Eximwala Solutions in Singapore. This firm was established in February 2024. 

The group CEO of Aditya Garg’s Eximwala in Singapore, the director of Eximwala proprietorship firm in India, is a person called Vikrant Agrawal. He is also a member of the elder Garg’s federation of rice exporters. 

According to the Singapore-based Eximwala Solution’s website, the company provides chartered shipping services for rice being exported from India. It has listed all of its planned and completed voyages on its website, and The Reporters’ Collective studied commercially available export data to establish that several of these voyages did indeed occur in and around the dates listed by Eximwala. 

Aditya’s Singapore entity, Eximwala Solutions, by its own claim, has shipped (including orders in the pipeline) 4.1 lakh metric tonnes of rice from India to other parts of the world for various clients. This is a good and speedy business acquisition for a fledgling company. 

During the course of our reporting, we paid a visit to the Garg family home as well as the family offices on Bhagwan Dass Nagar, New Delhi. We met Aditya Garg, whom we asked about Prem Garg’s current businesses in India. When we asked about his father’s past cases and alleged crimes, as well as the relationships, if any, between the different firms that he and his father have separate stakes in, the interview took a hostile turn. Aditya maintained that Prem Garg was not a direct beneficiary in any companies owned or managed by Aditya. 

"My father has no associations with my firms; he presently heads a rice exporters’ federation," he said. In the same breath, Aditya said that if his name or the names of his companies are mentioned in The Reporters’ Collective’s report, he will “come after” us.

We subsequently sent written queries to Aditya Garg. His reply was, “I am currently out of the office on vacation and will be back on November 2, 2025. During this period, I will have limited access to my emails and office files. I will review your message and get back to you as soon as possible after my return.” Our questions to Aditya Garg and his entire response can be read here.