- Saturday, April 12, 2025
The court also found that the realisations from assets attached by the Enforcement Directorate in India were conditional and did not discharge the debt under English law
By: India Weekly
A CONSORTIUM of Indian banks on Wednesday (9) won their court appeal in London to uphold a bankruptcy order against Vijay Mallya in a long-standing legal battle seeking repayment of a judgment debt owed by his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines.
High Court judge Anthony Mann ruled in favour of the banks to allow an appeal heard in February, while refusing two applications seeking permission to appeal filed by the 69-year-old businessman, declared a fugitive and wanted for fraud and money laundering charges in India.
“The banks’ pleaded position on security was one which they were entitled to adopt,” Justice Mann ruled.
Law firm TLT LLP, representing the banks, noted that the ruling confirmed the banks did not hold security over Mallya’s assets and that the bankruptcy petition was correct.
The court also found that the realisations from assets attached by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) were conditional and did not discharge the debt under English law.
The case dates back to 2017 when the banks registered the Debt Recovery Tribunal’s judgment in the English courts, which pertained to a personal guarantee Mallya had provided in relation to loans made to Kingfisher Airlines.
The banks then served Mallya with a bankruptcy petition in September 2018, which he opposed on multiple grounds.
In April 2020, London’s Insolvency & Companies Court (ICC) ruled that the banks held security over Mallya’s assets, rendering the bankruptcy petition partially defective under Section 269 of the Insolvency Act 1986.
The banks appealed this finding, and in March 2021 Justice Snowden permitted them to bring the security appeal, which was heard this year and has now been concluded.
Mallya, who was declared bankrupt in July 2021, is pursuing a separate annulment application in the UK court, which is now scheduled for a directions hearing in October.
“In circumstances where even the (Indian) government confirms that the assets were ‘restored’, it is fanciful to imagine that those recoveries are in any sense conditional.
“Mallya will, on this basis, pursue with vigour his application to annul the Bankruptcy Order in England in conjunction with proceedings in the Karnataka High Court to compel the banks to provide an accounting and come clean,” said Leigh Crestohl, Mallya’s lawyer at Zaiwalla & Co. (PTI)
