A Swiss court has sentenced 79-year-old Indian-British tycoon Prakash Hinduja and three members of his family to four years in prison for allegedly exploiting domestic staff at their villa in Switzerland.
The members of Britain’s richest family, whose fortune is estimated at $47 billion, were accused of bringing servants from their native India, employing them without proper documentation, confiscating their passports, and forcing them to work up to 18 hours a day for salaries less than a tenth the amount required under Swiss law.
The prosecutors also accused Prakash and his wife, as well as their son and daughter-in-law, of human trafficking – but the charge was dropped because the workers allegedly understood, “at least in part,” what they were getting into, according to AP.
The family reached an undisclosed settlement with their three accusers last week, but the Swiss authorities still decided to push forward with sentencing in the 2018 case, citing the “gravity” of the charges.
“They’re profiting from the misery of the world,” Geneva prosecutor Yves Bertossa told the court in his closing address on Friday, accusing the billionaires of paying their vulnerable employees less than they were spending “on their dog.”
The Hindujas, who were not present in court due to old age and poor health, denied the allegations and are “disappointed” by the “excessive” indictment, according to their lawyers, who pledged to appeal the ruling to seek “justice, not social justice.”
“We are not dealing with mistreated slaves,” one lawyer told the court, arguing that the workers were free to leave the villa. Another lawyer claimed that the employees were actually “grateful to the Hindujas for offering them a better life.”
Prakash is the second of three brothers, all UK citizens, in control of the Hinduja Group, a multinational conglomerate which has business interests in oil, banking, IT, cyber security, healthcare, real estate and media. He obtained Swiss citizenship in 2000 and settled in Switzerland, from where he runs the family bank, according to the FT. His older brother Gopichand, the UK’s richest man, controls the group’s affairs from London, while their younger brother Ashok runs the group’s Indian interests.