ED files second charge sheet against Vijay Mallya
NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday filed its second chargesheet against liquor baron Vijay Mallya in a special court in Mumbai for violating provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
The chargesheet also names Kingfisher Airlines Limited and UBHL (United Breweries Holding Ltd) and alleges that the accused cheated a consortium of public sector banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI) to the tune of ₹6,000 crore and siphoned off the loan amount to dummy companies owned by Mallya.
ED in a statement said that Mallya and officials of Kingfisher Airlines conspired “to project and get accepted the Brand Value as a collateral security inspite of the same being a hypothetical asset and suffering from deficiencies and also deliberately avoided in submitting the Valuation Report of another brand valuer.”
The chargesheets shows that the Kingfisher brand was valued at ₹3,406 crore by Grant Thornton and was used to secure the over ₹6,000 crore loan from the consortium of banks.
ED alleges that the loan amount was siphoned off for acquiring a corporate jet which was mainly used for as a perfunds sonal carrier by Mallya. The money was siphoned off to make payments to Mallya’s IPL team, Royal Challengers Bangalore through a company named Royal challengers Sports Pvt. Ltd.
over ₹3,700 crore were also diverted through false remittances by Mallya using bank accounts of Kingfisher Airlines and his Force India Formula One Team.
The chargesheet alleged that Kingfisher used two aircraft of Ms Veling Limited, by leasing them on very high lease rentals as compared to the market, and allegedly siphoned of ₹3,432.40 crore funds by “over-invoicing the payments” made to the said plane owning company.
The ED had last year filed its first charge sheet against Mallya, now in London, in the alleged ₹900-crore IDBI Bankkingfisher Airlines (KFA) loan fraud case. The ED had filed an FIR in the case in August, 2016 after taking cognisance of a CBI FIR.
“The SBI, which is the consortium leader, has calculated the amount (of the loan) to the tune of ₹9,990.07 crore (including applied interest) as on May 15, 2018,” the agency said in the chargesheet.
It has attached assets worth ₹9,890 crore in this case till now.
Top sources in the agency indicated that it would soon move court to get Vijay Mallya declared a “fugitive” and recently promulgated Fugitive Economic Offenders Ordinance. This would enable ED to confiscate more assets belonging to Mallya.