The Return of Vijay Mallya, Wants To Repay Rs 13,000 Crore And Return To India

Vijay Mallya has sought the permission of the Karnataka High Court to let him and his holding firm UBHL sell their assets under the judicial supervision and repay the creditors including all the state-run banks. He showed the willingness to settle the dues and return to India.

In a statement released on Tuesday, he stated that UBHL and himself have filed an application setting out the available assets of about INR 13900 crore. Mallya has been accorded a status of willful defaulter by the consortium of banks in India. In a series of tweets, he claimed that he has made and continued to make every effort to settle the dues with Public Sector Banks. He also added that he had made two offers for settlement to the banks and they both were turned down.

Mallya in another tweet, also lamented that he had become a poster boy of the bank default and the lightning rod of public anger. He fled India on 2nd March 2016 and has been living in London since then despite the summons from the Indian courts and the law enforcement agencies for him to appear before them for trial. Mallya also stated that the CBI had criminalized the case by moving against him despite his intentions to settle the dues with the banks. He claimed that the bulk of the dues were on account of interest and with the refusal to grant permission to sell the assets, the interest kept mounting.

17 banks led by the State Bank of India gave INR 5500 crore loans to Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines over the last decade. Mallya recalled that more than INR 600 crore has been recovered through the sale of pledges assets and INR 1280 crore was deposited with the Karnataka High Court since 2013. He also wrote letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in April 2016, clarifying his position and seeking their intervention with the settlement of the dues but there was no response from them.