Mumbai:
A special court today issued a non-bailable warrant against liquor baron Vijay Mallya who was alleged of money-laundering in a 900-crore loan from IDBI to his now defunct Kingfisher Airlines. Kingfisher Airlines has allegedly defaulted on loans of over Rs 9,400 crore obtained from various banks and Mallya has left India for Britain where he is staying with his family.
The Union Government had suspended Vijay Mallya’s diplomatic passport and even threatened to revoke it if he does not come to India and cooperate with the investigations. ED counsel Venegaonkar said three summons had been issued by the PMLA court against Mallya this year on March 10, March 18 and April 2 asking him to appear in the case. However, Vijay Mallya replied in e-mails to ED that he cannot appear because of his commitments in Europe and also because he was busy trying to arrange money to pay off his debts by a one-time arrangement.
In all these e-mails, Vijay Mallya sought time to appear and he was delaying the progress of investigations by not coming before ED, the agency’s lawyer told the court while justifying issuance of a Non Bailable Warrant against him.
