Mumbai Special Court declares Vijay Mallya ‘fugitive’

mumbai — In a significant victory for the investigating agencies, a Mumbai Special Court on Saturday declared absconder liquor baron Vijay Mallya a ‘fugitive’ under the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018.

A Special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) Court in Mumbai gave its verdict in a case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in June 2018.

In the first of its kind case under the FEOA, on June 22 last year, the ED moved the Special PMLA Court seeking to declare Mallya a ‘fugitive economic offender’ under the new act, to enable confiscation of all his properties, estimated at over Rs120 billion. However, through his lawyers, Mallya told the Special Court that he had not fled the country but left in the ordinary course to attend a meeting in Switzerland in March 2016 at the World Motor Sport Council and the arrest warrant against him was issued much later. Special PMLA Court Judge M.S. Azmi will start hearing arguments on confiscation of Mallya’s properties from February.

Under the FEOA, any person against whom an arrest warrant has been issued in respect of a scheduled offence and who has left India to avoid criminal prosecution or is abroad or refuses to return to India will face criminal prosecution. After the person is declared a ‘fugitive economic offender’, the prosecuting agency is vested with the powers to confiscate all his assets and properties to recover the dues. —