Team News Riveting
New Delhi, October 26
The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a plea filed by liquor baron Vijay Mallya`s United Breweries Holdings Limited (UBHL) to challenge a Karnataka High Court order to uphold the winding up of the company for recovery of dues payable by Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.
A bench headed by Justice UU Lalit declined to entertain the appeal filed by UBHL. The top court thus affirmed the winding up of the 102-year-old parent company of the UB Group.
Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, representing the consortium of banks led by the SBI, informed the top court that so far around Rs 3,600 crore have been recovered but Rs 11,000 crore still needed to to be recovered from Mallya and UBHL.
Rohatgi contended that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) should not have attached the properties of the company as these were encumbered assets and thus banks had the first claim over the assets.
Earlier during the hearing, Rohtagi told a bench led by Justice UU Lalit that Mallya is facing bankruptcy proceedings in the UK, besides extradition proceedings. “Appeals should be dismissed as Mallya is behind all this and is playing ducks and graces,” he said, requesting the apex court to give it some more time to seek “other instructions and also find about the ongoing proceedings.”
The government had informed the judges that fresh “secret” proceedings against Mallya had started, though the fugitive businessman had already lost his appeals in the UK’s highest court against his extradition to India.
However, the government claimed that it was not aware of the exact nature of the ongoing proceedings as it had neither been notified nor was a party to the proceedings, thus the extradition was getting delayed.
