India’s best-known absconder Vijay Mallya has thus far managed to evade the long arm of the law. He currently is appearing before a UK court in his extradition trial. Will Indian law enforcement authorities be able to bring him back to India, where he can be punished for his crimes? Do the rich and famous in India ever really pay for their crimes?
Vijay Mallya and his companies have defrauded Indian banks and financial institutions and he faces charges of money laundering and fraud to the tune of Rs 9,000 crores. In spite of this, the tycoon found it fairly easy to skip the county and park himself in the UK, evading the Indian law enforcement authorities and continuing to live his fabled ‘king-size’ life. Summonses were issued by Indian courts, his passport was asked to be revoked belatedly. None of this made the slightest difference to India’s absconder-in-chief.
He continued to tweet about his many expensive interests and assets such as cricket and racing. He made some laughable repayment offers which banks summarily rejected. He did not seem too perturbed when he was booed at Lords either.
There are extradition proceedings now ongoing against Vijay Mallya in the UK. The Indian authorities are represented by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which told the court about outstanding loans of about Rs 2,000 crores sought by the tycoon’s company, the erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines. According to the prosecution, they had shown a prima facie case against Mallya.
It is alleged that Mallya has made various misrepresentations before the banks, that he misused the loan amounts and that he was a willful defaulter who knowingly resisted repaying the banks. Mallya has shown bad faith in refusing to repay loans in spite of being exceedingly wealthy in a personal capacity. He has preferred not to repay loans and has even kept employee salaries outstanding in spite of being tremendously rich himself. In ten days, we shall know whether the UK finds merit in India’s case and orders for Mallya to be extradited.
However, the aspect appears bleak in light of previous extradition attempts. Extradition of people such as former IPL Chairman Lalit Modi, ex Indian Naval clearance diving officer Ravi Shankaran (accused of military espionage), music composer Nadeem Saifi (accused in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (wanted for the 1993 Gujarat blasts) has been attempted before but failed. India’s record of securing extraditions has been very poor till date. There is no reason to be optimistic in the matter of someone who is as rich, well-connected and influential as Mallya.
Mallya is far from the only willful defaulter. Indian businesspeople showing themselves unable to repay bank loans in spite of amassing obscenely large personal fortunes is a common enough story. It is often in collusion with bank officials that large loans are obtained without sufficient security. The assets of the borrowing entity are knowingly allowed to be frittered away; leaving the financial institution with no real recourse while the promoters/directors and others involved continue to live lavish lives.
Not only that, the unpaid loans of willful defaulters are actually written off or declared nonperforming assets. Staggering sums – estimated to total up to about Rs 1.14 lakh crores have been written off by public sector banks in the last three years or so.
Since Vijay Mallya is much in the headlines and there is such a public outcry against him, perhaps the government is actively pursuing this extradition. However, its conduct with regard to other willful defaulters appears puzzling in the extreme. The charge of crony capitalism has frequently been levied against the government in recent times. With the sheer volume of bad loans being written off or being declared to be nonperforming assets, the charge does not seem misdirected.
It would appear that no one is really interested in protecting or recovering public funds – the seeming collusion between borrowers and lenders and the glacial pace of recovery proceedings appear to substantiate this claim.
Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at [email protected]
