UK Court grants Vijay Mallya permission to spend £18,000 a week!

While in the eyes of the Indian laws, its enforcing agencies, the banks that had granted him or his defunct Kingfisher Airlines an offender, alleged criminal, defaulter or whatever name one can choose to describe, the UK court, at least, as of now does not seem to be bothered by that.

The proof of this in its granting permission to increase his weekly living allowance from £5,000 (Rs 4.5 lakh) to £18,325 (Rs 16 lakh) hold your breath, a WEEK.

Mallya has gone a step ahead by applying to have the 'freeze' against the 'global assets' discharged.

In defense of him, Sarosh Zaiwalla, a senior partner at Zaiwalla & Co, LLP London has gone on record by saying, “If he is used to a luxury lifestyle then the court will not suddenly make him live on £200 (Rs 17,000) a week,” We should not mind the fact that his weekly allowance equates to the average annual salary of a British school leaver.

Even though the high court in London had increased the allowance, for the present, it has refrained from revoking the freeze order on his global assets. However, it is left to anybody's guesses what view the court would take on his appeal to release this freeze.

The moral of the story is for those who can do so, it is not unfair to take massive loans from the Indian Banks, convert the loans into assets outside the country in any safe heaven, leave the country and claim that as assets as though they were earned out of sweat.
Swiftness and execution have different connotations for different classes of people. While the banks have to keep counting the NPAs, the Reserve Bank is busy is redefining the NPA norms and the government talks tough in theory but in reality has been thinking of recapitilising with instruments, which has been going in circles, like the business cycles.

Supreme Court rules Vijay Mallya guilty of contempt of Court

 The Supreme Court directed Vijay Mallya to appear before it on 10th July, 17 when it would pronounce its verdict on the quantum of the sentence he would have to undergo for committing the offence of contempt of court!

On 9th May, 17, the Supreme Court held that the UB Group Chairman Vijay Mallya to have committed contempt of court and has ordered him to appear before it on the 10th July, 17 when it would be decided on the quantum of his prison sentence.

The ruling is the outcome of a plea made by a consortium of creditors led by the State Bank of India, (SBI). The bank had argued that Mallya had disobeyed the orders of the court by making ‘vague and unclear disclosure of his assets’ and transferring a $40 million payment he had received from Diageo Plc to his children. In addition, he had ignored the summonses issued by the court to appear in person from time to time.

Justices A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit had further stated in their order as follows:  “We give him an opportunity to be present in court personally while deciding on the quantum of punishment”.


While from the government’s side Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had argued that Mallya’s presence would indicate the seriousness of his desire to negotiate a deal, Mallya’s lawyer, C.S. Vaidyanathan defended him by saying that his client’s presence in India is not necessary to negotiating a deal as that could be done from London.

The arrest drama of Mallya at London

It may be called that Mallya was held briefly in London in April in response to India’s demand for his extradition. The sixty-one-year-old businessman nicknamed ‘king of good times’ was released on executing a £650,000 bail bond and the next hearing is scheduled for 17th May.

In view of the above, Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, opined that the Supreme Court ruling can have the teeth only if the extradition authorities at the UK determine that Mallya should be extradited. The non-compliance with the ruling can be invoked in any future legal proceedings and Mallya could be declared as a ‘fugitve’ if he fails to appear in court,

 Mallya claims that he had been targeted politically by being made as a “poster boy of loan defaulters in India”