Hindujas: Four members of UK’s richest household jailed | UK | News | EUROtoday

Members of Britain’s richest household have been handed jail sentences after being discovered responsible of exploiting their susceptible home staff and offering unauthorised employment.

The 4 members of the family are Indian-born tycoon Prakash Hinduja and his spouse Kamal, together with their son Ajay and his spouse Namrata.

However a Swiss court docket cleared the foursome of extra critical fees of human trafficking linked to their servants.

The court docket dominated that the servants, who labored at their lakeside villa in Geneva, had recognized what it was they had been stepping into.

Jail phrases spanning 4 to four-and-a-half years was handed right down to the members of the family, whose attorneys mentioned they’d enchantment the conviction.

The defendants weren’t in court docket to listen to testimony sentence, though the household’s enterprise supervisor Najib Ziazi was current. He was given an 18-month suspended sentence.

Last week, the court docket heard the household had reached an undisclosed settlement with the plaintiffs.

They had been accused of alleged criminal activity, together with exploitation, human trafficking and violation of Swiss labour legal guidelines.

Prosecutors mentioned the employees had been typically pressured to work as much as 18 hours a day with little or no vacation day without work.

They had been allegedly paid lower than one-tenth of the comparable quantity required beneath Swiss regulation.

The prosecution mentioned the employees lived beneath a “climate of fear” and a few allegedly acquired their wages in Indian rupees which had been paid into financial institution accounts again residence that they might not entry.

The household controls the multinational conglomerate the Hinduja group, whose companies vary from vehicles and lubricants to banking and cable tv.

Prakash Hinduja’s brother Gopichand took over as chairman after older sibling Srichand died in May 2023.

The household, led by Gopi, topped the 2024 Sunday Times wealthy checklist with a mixed wealth of £37.196bn.