ED to move court this week to get Vijay Mallya declared a fugitive under new ordinance: Reports
The Enforcement Directorate is expected to seek the ‘immediate confiscation’ of Mallya’s attached assets, valued at over Rs 12,400 crore.
The Enforcement Directorate will move a special court this week to declare businessman Vijay Mallya a fugitive under the Fugitive Economic Offenders Ordinance, The Indian Express reported on Monday. The ordinance, promulgated in April, empowers the government to seize the assets of those declared fugitives by a competent court in economic offences.
The Enforcement Directorate is expected to seek the “immediate confiscation” of Mallya’s attached assets, valued at over Rs 12,400 crore. The assets can also be sold to pay back defaulted loans. This will be the first case filed under the ordinance.
After the ED moves court, Mallya will get six weeks to present himself for trial, and if he does not, he will be declared a “fugitive economic offender”.
The agency will seek the order when it files a supplementary chargesheet against Mallya and his companies on charges of money laundering and for allegedly cheating a consortium of nationalised banks to the tune of Rs 6,027 crore, unidentified officials told PTI on Sunday.
The ED had filed its first chargesheet against Mallya in June 2017 in the Rs 900-crore IDBI Bank-Kingfisher Airlines loan default case. It has attached assets worth Rs 9,890 crore in the case so far.
The supplementary chargesheet will be based on a complaint received from State Bank of India on behalf of the consortium of banks for causing losses of Rs 6,027 crore to them by not paying back loans taken between 2005 and 2010, officials said.
The businessman, who has been in the United Kingdom since March 2016, had said he would not return to the country. India’s Ministry of External Affairs submitted an extradition request to the United Kingdom in February 2017 after Mallya made his self-imposed exile clear. A UK court is hearing the plea.