Vijay Mallya loan default case: DRT allows bankers to start proceedings to recover debt

The Debt Recovery Tribunal allowed bankers to start proceedings to recover Rs 6,203 cr debt from beleaguered liquor baron Vijay Mallya.

New Delhi: The Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) on Thursday allowed bankers to start proceedings to recover debt from beleaguered liquor baron Vijay Mallya.

DRT ordered the SBI-led consortium of banks to start the process of recovering Rs 6,203 crore, at annual interest rate of 11.5 percent, from Mallya and his companies in the Kingfisher Airlines case.

"I hereby ask the bankers to start the process of recovery of Rs 6,203 crore at the interest rate of 11.5 per cent per annum from Mallya and his companies including UBHL, Kingfisher Finvest and Kingfisher Airlines," DRT Presiding Officer K Sreenivasan said in his order.

DRT was hearign a plea by SBI-led consortium of banks for recovery of loan from beleaguered Mallya in the Kingfisher Airlines case.

The lenders had moved the DRT in 2013 to recover dues from the defunct airline. SBI had filed three other applications also, including one seeking Mallya's arrest and impounding his passport, for "defaulting" on loans.

Mallya, who left the country on March 2 last year and is now in the UK, has been declared Proclaimed Offender by a special PMLA court in Mumbai on a plea of Enforcement Directorate in connection with its money laundering probe against him in the alleged bank loan default case.

United Breweries (Holdings) Ltd (UBHL) is promoted by Mallya, of which he was made the Principal Officer last September in the absence of a Managing Director, while Kingfisher Finvest is a holding company.

The order brings an end to the nearly three-year legal battle in the Tribunal by the consortium, comprising 17 banks, to recover the money owed to them by the defunct airlines.