Friday, September 14, 2018

CBI watered down airport alert on Vijay Mallya for ‘lack of evidence’

The look out circular (LoC) issued almost three years ago against Vijay Mallya, which is now at the heart of a political spat over his departure from India, was downgraded from “detain” at immigration to merely “inform” because of lack of enough evidence at the time, CBI sources told The Indian Express.

Mallya left India on March 2, 2016, and is now facing extradition proceedings in a London court on charges of fraud and money laundering amounting to Rs 9,000 crore. On Wednesday, he claimed that he had “met the Finance Minister” before leaving India, triggering Opposition charges of collusion. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley described Mallya’s claims as “factually false”.

According to CBI sources, the agency registered a case of cheating and criminal conspiracy against Mallya on July 29, 2015, following a nationwide uproar over loan defaults by Kingfisher Airlines. The FIR was based on “source information” as no bank had approached the agency at the time with a complaint against the businessman.

On October 16, 2015, sources said, the CBI sent an LoC request to immigration authorities, asking them to detain Mallya, who was then in the UK, on arrival. A month later, on November 23, immigration officials informed CBI that Mallya was arriving the next day. But CBI asked immigration to downgrade the LoC from “detain” to “inform” on arrival, sources said.
14/09/18 Deeptiman Tinwary/Indian Express

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