Supreme Court hands Vijay Mallya a second chance

The Supreme Court on Tuesday prima facie found that liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who owed over Rs 9,000 crores to the banks had not made full disclosure of his assets and liabilities as directed by it in April and granted four weeks to him to disclose all his assets.

A Bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and Rohinton Nariman, hearing the contempt petition filed by a consortium of banks rejected the arguments of Vijay Mallya that he was not bound to disclose as the banks have not accepted his offer of settlement.

The Bench directed Mallya to disclose in full details of all his overseas assets, including bank accounts.

The Bench also asked him to explain as to what happened to $40 million received by him on February 26 after selling one of his liquor firms.

The Bench accepted the arguments of Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi that Mallya was silent on the 40 million dollars in his response to the court notice.

Arguing for Mallya, senior counsel C.S. Vaidyanathan submitted that his client had not committed any contempt by not talking about the sale proceeds. He pointed out that the Court had asked Mallya to disclose only the assets and liabilities, not to make a statement of income and expenditure.

The AG however, submitted that Mallya was trying to deceive the banks and the Court, instead of coming clean by making full disclosure. The Bench posted the matter for further hearing on November 24.