Supreme Court order Mallya to appear before it on March 30.
By Sreekanth A. Nair
A consortium of Indian banks led by State Bank of India that sought the help of the Supreme Court of India to recover a loan amounting to $1.4 billion from defaulter Vijay Mallya has taken possession of 9 trademarks related to his defunct company Kingfisher Airlines.
The trademarks taken into possession include “Kingfisher” label, “Flying Models” and “Fly the Good Times.”
Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi had informed the Supreme Court that the liquor baron Mallya, who is also a Rajya Sabha member, had left the country on the same day when the consortium approached the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT).
The consortium moved the Supreme Court after it failed to get an order from DRT preventing Mallya leaving India and to freeze his assets.
After understanding that Mallya has left the country, the Supreme Court asked him to appear before the court with his passport on March 30.
The bench hearing the plea has also decided to serve a notice to Mallya through his official Rajya Sabha email, the Indian High Commission in London, and also through the counsel representing him before various high courts, the DRT and also through his company.
The court wants him to respond within two weeks.
Mallya, who is believed to be in England, is reportedly living a luxurious life there. Media houses reported that the business tycoon has immense wealth in foreign countries than he has in India and which would be enough to pay off his debts.
Some banks have even called him a wilful defaulter.
A NDTV report said that Mallya had crores of assets which if accumulated would be enough to pay back the loan amount at default.
Some of his assets include $353 million earned from the sale of his stake in United Spirits, USL shares worth $22 million and shares in United Breweries worth $1000 million. If these assets are added up, it will be sufficient to pay off the debt.
But Mallya has already pledged some of his shares in some companies with some banks. These banks had tried to sell off these shares to recover the loan amount due to them from him. But they failed mainly because of the legal actions he had taken against the sale.
Ironically, Mallya fraudulently left India with a huge loan default just when the government is urging banks to clean up bad debts in their balance sheet which is estimated at around $120 billion.
When the nation is witnessing serious discussions on Vijay Mallya’s huge debt, an incident that happened in Tamil Nadu state is going viral: a farmer was beaten up by police for not repaying a portion of a loan amounting to $1911.
G Balan, a farmer of Thanjavur had borrowed a loan of $5000 to purchase a tractor. Though he managed to repay $6029 including interest, he failed to pay the rest of money due to crop failure.
The bank obtained a court order to seize the tractor and executed the order with the help of the police.