India seeks fugitive tag for Mallya

India on Friday made its first move to clampdown on big bank loan defaulters under a new law as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) moved court against liquor baron Vijay Mallya seeking to declare him a 'fugitive offender' and to confiscate his assets worth ~125 billion.

Officials said the central probe agency filed an application before a special court in Mumbai, under the recently promulgated Fugitive Economic Offenders Ordinance, that empowers it to confiscate "all linked assets" of an absconding loan defaulter.

The application accessed by PTI said the ED seeks to "confiscate all the properties ofVijayMallyaincludingthose properties indirectly controlled by him." The application said the "estimated value ofpropertiesproposedforconfiscation is to the tune of ~125 billion approximately, which includes immovable properties as well as movable properties in form of shares." The action has been taken in pursuance of two bank loan moneylaunderingcasesofover~90 billioninvolvingtheIDBIbank and a SBI-led consortium and these became predicate offences for the latest action under the Ordinance brought bytheModigovernmentearly this year. The World Cup Russia opened with a cumulative reach (total number of people who saw the tournament for at least one minute) of 47.3 mn viewers on the first two days of the tournament (four matches) on TV and digital mode This includes viewership and engagement on highlights and surround content. Individually, TV clocked over 41 million viewers during the World Cup telecast and over 6 million viewers viewed the tournament on SonyLIV. Kerala, West Bengal, North East and Maharashtra are According to data available on the BARC India website, the top five sports programmes for the week (June 9 to June 15) include the opening ceremony and matches from the FIFA World Cup. Three of the matches in the list were telecast on Sony Ten 2 while one was on Sony ESPN