Absconding loan defaulter Vijay Mallya on Tuesday reportedly said that he has every intention of settling his dues with various Indian banks. The chairman of United Breweries Group and former Rajya Sabha member said that he is tired of relentless pursuit by the Narendra Modi government and probing agencies.
The flamboyant businessman said he has even written letters to both the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister on April 15, 2016 to explain his side of the story, and made those letters public on Tuesday. "No response was received from either of them," he said in a statement, seeking to state "factual position" in response to the controversy surrounding him.
Mallya escaped to Britain in 2016 and since then, the Modi government has been making efforts to extradite him. Banks are seeking to recover around Rs 9,900 crore from him and in 2017, he was arrested on an extradition warrant.
"I have become the Poster Boy of bank default and a lightning rod of public anger," he wrote in one of his letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He added, "The ED has also attached assets belonging to me, my Group Companies and companies owned and/or controlled by my family under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) currently valued at approximately Rs 13,900 crore."
Meanwhile, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has submitted a second charge sheet in a special court against the businessman, UB Holding and the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines along with others charging them of laundering Rs 9,990 crore which they had allegedly fraudulently availed as loan from an SBI-led consortium of 17 banks.
The charge sheet claims that Mallya used his Force India Formula 1 team and IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore for money laundering. A year ago, ED filed the first charge sheet against him and eight others for defrauding IDBI Bank of Rs 900 crore and laundering it.
The latest charge-sheet indicated that Mallya-controlled Kingfisher Airlines took a loan of Rs 6,027 crore from the consortium on personal guarantee of Mallya, corporate guarantee of UB Holdings and an inflated brand guarantee of Kingfisher Airlines.
The charge sheet cited four instances wherein the loan amount to Kingfishers Airlines by a consortium of backs were diverted. The loan ostensibly taken for operational expenses of Kingfisher Airlines was used for other purposes, including procuring a chartered aircraft for Mallya's personal use.
The charge sheet claims that Mallya laundered the loan money with the help of shell companies with dummy directors. He also allegedly procured properties in the name of these companies and routed the money abroad through over-invoicing of lease rent for an aircraft which he procured from a Mauritius-based company for Kingfisher Airlines.
