The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday attached the properties of liquor baron Vijay Mallya and United Breweries worth Rs 1,411 crore in a money laundering case.
This comes a day after the ED moved court to declare him a proclaimed offender. The assets attached include a bank balance of Rs 34 crore, one flat each in Bengaluru and Mumbai, a 4.5-acre industrial plot in Chennai, a 28.75-acre coffee plantation in Kodagu, and residential and commercial constructed areas in UB City and Kingfisher Tower in Bengaluru.
The attachment of properties is related to the Rs 900-crore IDBI Bank loan fraud.The economic intelligence agency had registered a money laundering case against Mallya – who left India on March 2 – and others on January 25, based on a first information report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation in July last year.
According to the ED, a loan Rs 864 crore was sanctioned to Kingfisher Airlines against a collateral security of the Kingfisher brand, corporate guarantee of United Breweries and personal guarantee of Mallya. Of this, Rs 807 crore remained unpaid.
The agency decided to attach the property as it became known that some of Mallya’s properties were being disposed of. The ED said the loan was sanctioned “despite weak financials, negative networth, low credit rating of the borrower company”.
Also, the client did not satisfy the norms stipulated in the corporate loan policy of the bank, the ED said. The loan was sanctioned with an “extraordinary haste”, without verifying the quality and value of the security independently, it said.
It emerged during the investigation that from the very beginning, Kingfisher Airlines had defaulted in loan repayment, thereby putting the IDBI Bank to a wrongful loss, the ED said in a statement.
“Mallya and others entered into a criminal conspiracy for sanctioning of the loan in gross violations of the established procedure and Kingfisher had no intent for repayment of loan ab initio,” the ED said.
Published 11 June 2016, 19:51 IST