Vijay Mallya breaks silence, slams ‘wilful defaulter’ tag

Two years after arriving in Britain, and with India’s extradition case ongoing through the courts here, Vijay Mallya on Tuesday broke his silence, slamming the “politically motivated” case, and “blatantly false” allegations made against him, and highlighting his attempt, via the Karnataka High Court, to sell ₹13,900 crore of assets to repay creditors, including the banks at the heart of the case against him. Any attempt to block this effort would highlight the “agenda” being pursued against him beyond the recovery of dues to the banks, he said.

Mallya also made public letters he had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in April 2016, expressing his pain at becoming the “poster boy of all bank defaults, accused of looting public money and fleeing the nation”, and calling for the appointment of an ombudsman or committee to examine the situation so justice could “prevail.”

“I am tired of this relentless pursuit of me by the government…all my efforts are either ignored or misunderstood,” he wrote in his extraordinary statement, made public on Tuesday.

The latest development marks a break with Mallya’s approach till now, which has involved maintaining silence on the charges against him. While attending every hearing of the extradition case against him, even those he was not required by the court to attend, and conversing with media present there, he maintained a firm silence on the case, pointing journalists towards the arguments being made by his barristers in the court room.

Extradition hearing

The extradition hearing began in December and is set to continue on July 31. In a separate case, Mallya has applied to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal a lower court’s ruling upholding the World Freezing Order on his assets and the registration of the Indian Debt Recovery Tribunal’s ruling against him, in a case filed by 13 public sector banks to whom he was recently required to pay £200,000 towards legal expenses.

In his media statement, Mallya goes over much of the ground that had been presented by his legal representatives fighting the extradition efforts, challenging the government’s narrative of a conspiracy hatched with senior executives at IDBI, and subsequent efforts made to squirrel away the funds. Mallya insisted the approval process for the loans had been “appropriate” while their restructuring under a master debt cast agreement in 2010 had happened with the RBI’s permission.

The failure of Kingfisher Airlines had been due to circumstances beyond its control, and he had attempted to hold settlement discussions with the bank’s top management, he said. “I respectfully submit that my conduct does not amount to ‘wilful default,” he said, also expressing his sympathies with employees who had not been paid. “The non-payment of salaries did not go unnoticed by me,” he said, pointing to a 2014 application to the Supreme Court to pay part of the salaries of KFA employees.

Political motives blamed

He also slammed the criminal conspiracy charges and the “overreach” of the ED’s “vast powers” under the 2002 Prevention of Money Laundering Act. It “behoves the fundamental question of whether the government wants me to repay the public sector banks or not,” he wrote.

The suggestion of a political motivation in the case against Mallya has been a running theme through his defence against the extradition effort. “The whole case has been politicised by the BJP, Congress, and Shiv Sena…they all treat it as an opportunity to make political capital on the assumption there was fraud,” said his barrister Clare Montgomery in one of the hearings last year.

In April, the attempt by Mallya’s defence team to rule out much of the evidence in the case against him suffered a setback as the judge ruled most of the evidence produced thus far would be admissible, save for emails covered by legal professional privilege.

Over the course of the case the judge had sought clarity and documentation from India, though in March she said it was “blindingly obvious” IDBI had not followed its own rules when it came to lending decisions related to Mallya.

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