Return to Vijay Mallya, losing the British appeal in £ 1bn debt to the Indian Banks case | Company Business News

Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya lost an appeal on Wednesday against a bankruptcy order set by the London High Court over a debt of more than 1 billion pounds ($ 1.28 billion) to lenders, including the State Bank of India. Vijay Mallya on Monday claimed that Indian banks had access to its properties worth £ 14,131.6 crore, more than twice the amount he owed to banks in the public sector. Mallya, who lives in Britain, was embraced in a long legal battle with borrowers – as well as the Indian authorities – after the collapse of his decomposed Kingfisher in 2012. In 2017, a group of banks obtained a sentence in India worth more than 1 billion pounds against Mallya, which guaranteed the fault of Kingfisher Airlines. The decision was registered in Britain later that year and led to a bankruptcy order being made against Mallya in 2021. Mallya appealed against the bankruptcy order during a hearing in February when his attorneys argued that the banks had already recovered assets that effectively settled the debt. But his appeal was rejected on Tuesday, with Judge Anthony Mann in a written statement that “the most important point … is that the bankruptcy order stands”. Mallya’s advocates said in a statement that he would continue to reverse the bankruptcy order. Mallya, who was also co-owner of the Formula One car racing team Force India, fights separately after extradition to India to face charges of fraud over the collapse of Kingfisher Airlines. His most recent appeal against his extradition was rejected in 2020, but Mann said in his ruling that the extradition order had been “not enforced”. “Apparently, Dr Mallya is still resistant to extradition on other bases that have not yet to be resolved,” Mann added. (Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Sachin Ravikumar)