THE RISE AND FALL OF VIJAY MALLYA

 Mallya’s Businesses at a Glance 

1955: Vijay Mallya is born on 18 December to Vittal Mallya and Lalitha Ramaiah.
 1974: Appointed director on the board of United Breweries.
 1983: Inherits Vittal Mallya’s businesses (liquor, beer, food products, pharmaceuticals, agro chemicals, paints) with an estimated annual turnover of Rs 350 crore on his death.
1983 onwards: Begins ramping up Kingfisher beer.
 1985: Failed attempt to manufacture and sell EPABX systems.
 1985-86: Abortive bid to take over Shaw Wallace Late.
1980s: Starts and abandons pizza and cola-like drink businesses; starts UB Air, a private air taxi service.
1988: Starts Kingfisher Derby.
1988-90: Acquires engineering firms Best & Crompton and Western India Enterprises.
1990: Acquires Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilizers.
1991: Sells Berger Paints that he had inherited
1992: Takes over Kunigal Stud Farm started by Tipu Sultan two hundred years ago
1994: Plans for light rail transit systems for Bangalore

1995: Consolidates all liquor businesses into two companies (McDowell and Herbertsons); failed bid to brand West Windies cricket team as Kingfisher West Indies team; plans to enter mining, hotels.
1996: Enters newspaper publishing.
1998: United Breweries buys 50 per cent equity of Mohun Bagan and East Bengal; Mohammedan Sporting rejects bid.
2000: Gets into making customized software.
2000 onwards: Kingfisher beer becomes an internationally recognizable brand .
2000-04: Acquisition of domestic breweries and distillers
2004: Work on UB City, billed to be Bangalore’s biggest commercial property, begins
2005: Kingfisher Airlines becomes airborne; acquisition of Shaw Wallace (including its brand Royal Challenge)
2006: Forms United Spirits by consolidating all his liquor businesses (Shaw Wallace, McDowell, Herbertsons, Triumph Distillers)
2007: Acquisition of Whyte & Mackay, Scotland-based Scotch manufacturing company; acquires Deccan Aviation, which operated Air Deccan
2008: Kingfisher merged into Deccan Aviation; gets into F1 motor racing; becomes franchisee for IPL team called Royal Challengers Bangalore.

2009: Heineken buys equity in United Breweries and becomes equal partner; loan of Rs 950 crore from IDBI Bank for Kingfisher Airlines
2010: McDowell Signature Indian Derby starts with prize money of $400,000; luxury residential complex Kingfisher Towers planned; Kingfisher hit by engine maintenance problems; Kingfisher debts restructured by banks after accumulated debts top Rs 7,000 crore; Kingfisher international flights stopped

2012: Kingfisher Airlines is grounded
2013: Diageo takes over United Spirits
2014: Mallya loses Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilizers; Karnataka High Court restrains UB (Holdings) from selling flats in Kingfisher Towers
2015: SBI tags Mallya, Kingfisher Airlines and UB (Holdings) as wilful defaulters; CBI begins probing the loan by IDBI Bank to Kingfisher Airlines

2016: PNB follows suit and tags Mallya as wilful defaulter; Mallya is convicted in a cheque-bouncing case; non-bailable warrant issued against Mallya and he is declared a proclaimed offender; the stage is set for Heineken’s takeover of United Breweries
2017: Extradition proceedings against Mallya begin; he is arrested by the Scotland Yard on 18 April after the Indian government sends a request for extradition, but is granted provisional bail within hours on a bail bond of  650,000 and the condition that he would remain at the address providedd by him.

Preface INDIA CHANGED SLOWLY BUT

surely after the economic reforms of July 1991 began the process of liberalization. The reforms opened up the economy, bringing in opportunities for Indian entrepreneurs who were willing to modernize and upgrade their capabilities and face competition from foreign players. The laggards were destined to perish as they could not adjust to the changing

times, used as they were to operating in a sheltered environme nt. In a few years, changes to the industrial and business landscape of India gathered pace, and many old, established players started to fall by the wayside even as new ones emerged. One of the early movers who leapt on the liberalization bandwagon was Vijay Mallya. Having inherited a readymade drinks empire in 1983 after his father’s sudden demise, he realized that he would have to face competition from foreign players,

who sooner or later would show up on the country’s shores. Following the dictum ‘Join them if you cannot beat them’, Mallya started forging alliances with foreign liquor majors to strengthen his empire while also diversifying his own. Over the next decade and a half, he went a step further, becoming owner of production facilities and companies abroad. His non-resident Indian (NRI) status helped him run both his international and domestic businesses with ease, something he had realized in the late 1980s after

his failed attempt at buying the blue-chip Shaw Wallace. His business acquired a global facet. At the same time, he was accumulating all kinds of personal assets, such as luxury houses and vintage cars, quickly gaining the reputation of being an open-fisted spendthrift. He was also known to be fond of the company of women, and the liquor king’s opulent lifestyle in the fast lane was much talked about. Mallya was also considered to be cocky and arrogant. In fact, he was almost everything his father was not. The senior Mallya, an enormously rich man, was almost a miser who lived an austere life poring over balance sheets. He kept severely to himself, and few beyond his intimate circle knew him. He was barely recognizable in public. One of the most important changes brought in by liberalization was in the politics of the day. This has not been adequately recognized, leave alone studied, but it gave impetus to the rise of costly politics by bringing more money into elections. It also brought businessmen into politics. Until then, businessmen had

restricted themselves to financing elections and taking favours from politicians elected to office. But now, with more money to spare, they began to enter electoral politics. Here was a direct route to getting business: why give money to politicians and then wait for them to get elected to be granted favours? A more effective way was to get elected as public representatives and use the newfound clout to get things done directly. Mallya too realized that being a politician was not a bad deal, and in 2002 powered his way into the Rajya Sabha, getting elected again in 2010. Each time he used a different political party, displaying his clout across the board. In between, he also led a political party that contested elections across Karnataka but failed to make an impact. Success soon went to Mallya’s head. He sought

1 The Beginning of the End AS THE CLOCK STRUCK midnight on 18 December 2015, two sets of fireworks rent the night air at Candolim and Sinquerim beaches in Goa; they were so loud they could be heard in Panaji 18 km away, startling the locals. The fireworks went on for a full five
minutes without a break. Tourists still ambling on the beaches took out their phones and cameras to capture the display. The occasion was the sixtieth birthday of the ‘King of Good Times’, Vijay Mallya. Mallya was already deep in hot water, the banks having declared him a wilful defaulter, but this in no way diminished the grandeur and scale of the celebrations for his landmark birthday at his home in Kingfisher Villa on the Goa beachfront. In attendance were 200 friends and well-wishers who had flown in from every corner of India and all parts of the globe, and were staying at the nearby Taj Holiday Village and Taj Fort Aguada. The guests were treated to a two-hour non-stop session of Bollywood numbers by Sonu Nigam, who concluded it with ‘Tum jiyo hazaron saal, saal ke din ho pachas hazar’. But the chief attraction of the evening was the king of Latin pop, international icon Enrique Iglesias, who had travelled across the globe to sing for Mallya. He belted out his 2014 chart-topper ‘Bailando’ to say happy birthday as Mallya’s son Siddharth touched his father’s feet on stage, seeking his blessings. The grapevine had it that $2 million was spent on the party, described as ‘the mother of all bashes’. Even as the extravagant party was in full swing, Kingfisher Villa had a sword dangling over it; its takeover by the lenders whom Mallya had defaulted had been permitted by the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court. This was to be the last of Mallya’s many, many high-end events at the villa. The party drew adverse comments from many quarters, among them Raghuram Rajan, then governor of the Reserve Bank of India, who said in a characteristic understatement: ‘If you flaunt your birthday bashes while owing the system a lot of money, it does seem to the public that you don’t care. I think this is the wrong message to send. If you are in trouble you should be cutting down your expenses.’ Rajan did not name Mallya in this statement reported in the Times of India on 23 January 2016, but everybody understood whom he was referring to. The staff of the grounded Kingfisher Airlines also expressed their disgust. ‘He (Mallya) does not have money to pay our dues. How can he have such gala bashes and be insensitive to our sufferings?’ they complained, even as it surfaced that some of Mallya’s close associates had cautioned him against such a lavish affair. They had advised him to limit the celebrations to a party in London, where he maintained a home. He would then be far away from prying eyes in India, where not only banks but also investigating agencies were on his trail. But these words of caution fell on deaf ears. Mallya couldn’t care less about what people said. Mallya, who appeared to live from party to party, had always celebrated his birthdays in grand style, although the years since Kingfisher Airlines got into trouble had been marked by low-key events. In 2013, there had been an exclusive do at Niladri, his residence off Napean Sea Road, an upmarket locality in Mumbai. Some of his birthday bashes had been on Indian Empress, the superyacht he owned. His fiftieth birthday celebrations—at the same spot in Goa as his sixtieth—had also happened in immoderate style, having been an all-night affair, with the American singer Lionel Richie entertaining guests who had been ferried from all over by two Kingfisher Airlines planes requisitioned just for the party. The invite sent out by Mallya said: ‘When I turned 40 a decade ago, I was fortunate to have joined by my closest friends over a three-day celebration that included themed events. While I cross another milestone, I am planning on an exciting but somewhat chilled out series of rendezvous with the Sun, sand and sea in Goa.’ Top industrialists, Bollywood stars, politicians and an assorted assemblage of the wealthy and the fashionable had turned up. Less than two-and-a-half months after his sixtieth birthday, Mallya spirited himself out of India and away from the reach of the long arm of the law. The rumour in New Delhi was that he had been tipped off by a mandarin that he could be soon behind bars as legal proceedings against him were imminent. The tip was not passed on to Mallya directly; it was said a high-profile fixer-cum-socialite obtained this information from the mandarin and passed it on to Mallya, who lost no time in making his exit. Mallya had also come to know that on 28 February 2016, senior Supreme Court counsel Dushyant Dave had advised the State Bank of India to approach the courts to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The SBI took its time to act, but Mallya did not. On 2 March 2016, Mallya, holding a diplomatic passport—by virtue of his being a Member of Parliament—whizzed through immigration with ease and boarded the London-bound Jet Airways flight 9W-122 from New Delhi. According to newspaper reports, Mallya occupied seat 1D in first class and was accompanied by a lady who was later identified as his current girlfriend, Pinky Lalwani, once a hostess on Kingfisher Airlines. Mallya had carried seven pieces of luggage, indicating that this was no short business trip. Usually this quantity would account for the luggage of at least five passengers. At the airport, Jet Airways staff loaded Mallya’s luggage while he retired to the premium plaza lounge. It appeared that Mallya had spent an hour in the lounge. News reports said he walked slowly—very slowly—out of the lounge, and that the immigration officials noticed his exit but did not do anything to prevent him from boarding his flight. They had no orders to detain him or to prevent his exit. The reports also said Mallya’s tickets had been booked only hours in advance (the same day in the afternoon), giving credence to the theory that he left post-haste after learning that danger was at his heels. A lookout notice for Mallya had been issued by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to the Bureau of Immigration on 16 October 2015. This would have led to his detention the moment he presented himself at any immigration counter. Now, a lookout notice is usually not revised, but Mallya, besides being an MP, had top contacts; this may explain how the notice was amended barely a month later, on 24 November 2015. The amended notice required the immigration authorities to merely inform the CBI about his movements; it did not authorize them to detain him. It is interesting too that he had arrived in India from an overseas trip on the night of 24 November, a few hours after the CBI had amended its lookout notice. Earlier on the same day that he finally fled India, Mallya had been spotted in the lobby of Rajya Sabha, of which he was member. Nobody who met him there had any clue that he would soon make his escape out of the country. A couple of hours after Mallya was well airborne, then CBI Director Anil Sinha lambasted the chiefs of India’s top banks, including the SBI chairman, for not filing complaints against him in good time, telling them how their tardiness had delayed action against the liquor baron. At the annual session of the Indian Banking Association, the CBI chief would remind the bankers that his agency had to file cases suo motu against Mallya in the absence of first information reports initiated by banks. Sinha was quite unaware for
some time that the liquor baron had flown away for good, as Mallya had been frequently flying in and out of the country in the recent past. He had flown out on 1 December 2015 and had returned on December 7; he had flown out again on 23 December and returned on 2 February 2016. His last overseas trip before his escape to London was to Barbados in the West Indies, where he was negotiating the purchase of a cricket team for the Caribbean T20 cricket league. During this visit he also met with the prime minister of Barbados, Freundel Stuart, in the end bagging the Barbados Tridents. Rather misleadingly, Mallya later claimed that he had paid just $100 to win the team. But realizing that nobody would be fooled by this claim, he said later that the cost of running the team for a season would be $2 million. He also claimed that he had bought the team in a joint venture and the Barbados government would give him subsidies to run the franchise. ‘They are keen to help,’ he said. It was only on 9 March 2016 that the news of Mallya’s escape became public when the Attorney General of India Mukul Rohatgi informed the Supreme Court about it. All hell broke loose. Questions were asked about how Mallya had escaped in spite of a lookout notice against him, and the CBI was forced to clarify that it had downgraded its advisory to the immigration authorities because the case against Mallya was at a preliminary stage and there was no clinching evidence against him other than that he had reneged on repayments to banks. The CBI also said that lookout detention orders were usually made against individuals for whom there were non-bailable warrants. There was none against Mallya. That he had flown out of the country many times and had returned was evidence that he would not abscond and that he would be available for questioning if required in the future, CBI officials argued. Mallya himself tweeted on the same lines on 11 March 2016: ‘I am an international businessman. I have to travel to and from India frequently. I did not flee from India and neither I am an absconder. Rubbish.’ The CBI was proved wrong. On 25 February, less than a week before he fled the country, Mallya had got a huge severance package from United Spirits Limited (USL). This was a company that he had built but had subsequently lost control of after the Kingfisher Airlines fiasco. The company had been taken over by the world’s largest liquor manufacturer, Diageo Plc., in 2013. But since USL was a company that Mallya had built from 1983—when he took charge of it after the demise of his father—he had an emotional connect with it. Diageo thought it fit to allow Vijay Mallya to continue as chairman of the company. Although Diageo had done its due diligence on USL before taking it over, the Indian company still had much else to reveal, which Diageo discovered only after taking control of it. Alarmed by what it saw, Diageo commissioned a special audit of the books of accounts of USL, only to be confronted with the fact that Mallya had transferred Rs 1,225 crore from the company to entities that he privately controlled. Immediately the new management of USL asked him to step down. At first he refused but later agreed—on the condition that he would be paid a severance package, of which US$40 million would be paid upfront and the rest in tranches over five years. Mallya scooted as soon as he got the money. During the run-up to this, the CBI had no clue about what was going on. If the agency had well-informed sources, it could have filed a criminal complaint against Mallya for making away with cash from USL and arrested him as he attempted to board a flight out of the country. The CBI, however, did
have some clue that Mallya had allegedly pilfered cash from the company because it was around the same time that it made a reference of the matter to the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which looks after violation of provisions of the PMLA. Though the Diageo-controlled USL informed the bourses about the findings of its audit and also disclosed details of the deal to get Mallya off its back, it informed them about the money transaction with him only after the cash had been paid. Consequently, a stay on this payment by the Bangalore bench of the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) on 7 March 2016 was infructuous, and banks looking for recovery of their cash from him were left high and dry. It was again on 7 March that the ED filed cases of money laundering against him; around the same time the SBI approached the Supreme Court to block his exit from India by cancelling his passport. But he had already fled the country, a fact that had to be then disclosed before the Supreme Court. Safely ensconced in the United Kingdom, Mallya released a statement on 6 March that gave the impression that he was still in India. The statement accused the media of starting a witch-hunt against him. He asserted that he would always be available to investigating agencies. He pointed out that he was an NRI and had been one for twenty-eight years, implying that flying in and out of India was routine for him. ‘I have no intent or reason for absconding,’ he said. He claimed that there was no evidence of his wrongdoing in Kingfisher and that ‘Kingfisher was launched on the basis of a viable business plan vetted by SBI Capital Markets and renowned international aviation experts but despite every effort it was an unfortunate commercial failure caused by macro-economic factors and then government policies.’ He also hinted that he was being targeted: ‘None of these large borrowers, whose debts are significantly more than the Kingfisher debt, have been declared as wilful detractors but UB (Holdings) and I have been declared so on technical grounds.’ It is true that Mallya is not the only example of a corporate chieftain reneging on repayment of bank loans. But, at the same time, none of the chieftains of these other companies so uninhibitedly lives the opulent life. Mallya’s open display of his grand life has been the reason why he has attracted so much negative attention. Mallya may protest his innocence, but going by the sequence of events it appeared that the fear of being nailed on the alleged money laundering charges and consequent arrest made him fly out of India. The unfolding of subsequent events suggests that he has no intention to return. After landing in London, he seemes to have headed directly to the massive Hertfordshire mansion that he had bought from racing driver Lewis Hamilton’s father. Anthony Hamilton had sold the house near Welwyn Garden City to Mallya in July 2015 for £11.5 million. The mansion—named Ladywalk—sits on an estate of 30 acres on Queen Hoo Road in the village of Tiwen. It is heavily barricaded and allows Mallya the kind of privacy not possible in his London home. That home is located on Baker Street in central London, just two houses away from Madame Tussauds museum. (221b Baker Street is the address of Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and a museum now stands there.) Just as Mallya had anticipated, a horde of television crews headed to Hertfordshire as soon as news of his having left for London broke in India. He remained incommunicado but the prying newshounds were able to figure out that he had had many visitors on the previous days, that he frequented a local pub often and was locally well recognized. Predictably, Mallya’s disappearance raised temperatures in India, including in Parliament. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley maintained that there was no arrest order against Mallya and that the CBI had moved the courts for cancellation of his passport after he had left. But the Opposition Congress was strident. Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad alleged that Mallya had been allowed to escape by the government. ‘The government is a party to this conspiracy and the Supreme Court should take note of this,’ he thundered. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy said Mallya ‘is no saint for us’, and not ‘a single penny was given to him by the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government’, alluding to the fact that Mallya was a beneficiary of the largesse given by banks during the time of the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. The parliamentary duels apart, both the man on the street and business analysts believe that Mallya, with his wide-ranging contacts across political parties and the bureaucracy, had managed to bamboozle the system and make good his escape. As columnist Kenneth Rapora wrote in the international business magazine Forbes, ‘Mallya’s escape hatch is making mockery of Indian justice and the ruling BJP. Finance minister Arun Jaitley defended Mallya’s departure saying that the banks had not initiated the legal process for leaving the country by the time he boarded the flight out of India. How convenient. The ex-Forbes billionaire may be bad at running an airline but has hunch for timing legal matters perfectly.’ The first arrest warrant against Mallya was made more than a month and a half after he disappeared. On 18 April 2016, a special court issued a non-bailable warrant against him in response to a petition filed by the ED, which accused him of siphoning off Rs 430 crore from an IDBI Bank loan to Kingfisher Airlines to purchase properties. The ED had sought the warrant after Mallya skipped three summons How convenient. The ex-Forbes billionaire may be bad at running an airline but has hunch for timing legal matters perfectly.’ The first arrest warrant against Mallya was made more than a month and a half after he disappeared. On 18 April 2016, a special court issued a non-bailable warrant against him in response to a petition filed by the ED, which accused him of siphoning off Rs 430 crore from an IDBI Bank loan to Kingfisher Airlines to purchase properties. The ED had sought the warrant after Mallya skipped three summons issued to him to appear before the agency—on 18 March, 2 April and 9 April. Mallya had written to the agency that he would not be available before May because he was negotiating the repayment of his loans to commercial banks through the intervention of the Supreme Court. ‘This was a very specious agreement because return of loan cannot be linked with probe for breaking the law. Even if he returned the loan, the liability for transgressing the law is not obviated,’ Supreme Court advocate Diljeet Singh Ahluwalia says. Vijay Mallya’s name has since figured in the Panama papers that were released by the International Consortium of Investigating Journalists. The Times of India reported in its 9 April 2016 edition that Venture Net Holdings Ltd, registered in the British Virgin Islands and operating since 15 February 2016, was linked directly to Vijay Mallya (and not to one of his companies). Venture Net has an offshore link with Particullus Trust, which is a one-stop solution for setting up offshore accounts and is registered in Cook Islands in the South Pacific. Incidentally, the Supreme Court had also directed Mallya to appear before it on 30 March 2016 with his passport. Predictably, Mallya did not show up. The Supreme Court came into the picture when a consortium of banks led by the SBI approached it after realizing that Mallya had been able to circumvent the DRT. The court subsequently asked Mallya to give it a list of properties that he owned ‘in a sealed cover’. After much dilly-dallying and arguing that this would compromise his and his family’s privacy, he did provide a list, but one that was incomplete. In order to pressure him to appear before them, the ED requested the foreign ministry to revoke his passport in the fond hope that such a move would force the liquor baron to scurry back home. As a first step, the foreign ministry suspended his passport on 15 April, asking him to explain why it should not be revoked. Later, the passport was cancelled. But this did not serve the objective of getting Mallya home from London because under the Immigration Act 1971, ‘the UK does not require an individual to hold a valid passport in order to remain in the country’. Her Majesty’s government officially told the Indian government: ‘We can’t deport Vijay Mallya over an invalid passport. Consider requesting mutual legal assistance or extradition.’

Mallya’s extradition is theoretically possible using the extradition treaty signed by the two countries in 1993 and a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) signed in 1992. However, in practice, extradition is not an easy process because it requires approval from courts in the UK after their hearing of charges and the defence. Merely because the law-enforcing agencies want Mallya back in India does not mean that courts in the UK will be sympathetic to the demand. ‘If Mallya hires good lawyers, as he is bound to, the process will become complicated and more delayed,’ Supreme Court lawyer Diljeet Singh says. Only one Indian, Samir Patel, wanted for the post-Godhra violence, has been extradited by the UK since the treaty was signed. Hopes for Mallya’s extradition were raised after British Prime Minister Theresa May’s visit to India in November 2016. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented to her a list of sixty people wanted in India and currently ensconced in Great Britain. The list included Vijay Mallya. May promised all help, and the Indian government has now invoked the MLAT. A visit by Jaitley to London has also raised hopes. But top officials in the Government of India are sceptical about Mallya’s extradition from the UK so easily. Mallya was arrested by the Scotland Yard on 18 April 2017 after the Indian government sent a request for extradition. But, as per the norm, he was granted a provisional bail within hours of the arrest on a bail bond of £650,000 and the condition that he would remain at the address provided by him. Moreover, he has to be in touch with the authorities and his mobile phone has to be accessible all the time. But he remained cocky and tweeted: ‘Surrender of passport, arrest, bail, all part of normal extradition proceedings.’ There is every indication that he will argue before the courts in the UK that he is being singled out for victimization. This is clear from his tweets. Arraigned by the ethics committee of the Rajya Sabha—the custodian of moral and ethical conduct of its members—Mallya sent out a series of messages. ‘In all humility and not in defiance as they report, I would like the Indian media to check and verify facts before calling me a defaulter,’ he tweeted in April 2016. Another tweet said: ‘7686 defaulters owe PSU banks Rs 66,190 crores. It is easy to blame only Mallya.’ In yet another he declared: ‘The allegations against me are blatantly false. I am shocked that the Finance Ministry has provided factually wrong information to the Parliamentary Committee.’ But the Rajya Sabha ethics committee, headed by the veteran Karan Singh, remained unconvinced by his defence. On 25 April 2016 it decided to recommend termination of his Rajya Sabha membership. Having got wind of this a little earlier, he post-haste faxed a resignation letter to Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari. But it was rejected because the letter did not follow prescribed procedures and did not carry Mallya’s original signature. Considering that his membership was coming to an end on 30 June 2016, its termination in early May made little difference to his Rajya Sabha tenure. But to be officially kicked out of the Rajya Sabha was for Mallya a slap in the face. That he had decided not to return to India was made clear by his lawyer’s argument in the Supreme Court as early as 26 April 2016. His lawyer said: ‘He has no intention of coming to India soon because he is sure to be clapped in prison given the recent actions against him. If he is arrested the moment he comes in and taken to Tihar jail, it serves no purpose.’ The lawyer was arguing in the context of the repayment of the bank loans taken by Mallya. He seemed to be apprehensive that he would meet the same fate as Subrata Roy of Sahara. Roy, who partnered Mallya in the Formula One team for some time, had been sent to New Delhi’s Tihar jail in February 2014 on the orders of the Supreme Court. The court had given him interim bail, which would be operative only if he paid up Rs 10,000 crore to the capital market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Roy would have had to sell some of his assets to generate that money but failed to do so. Almost five months after his escape, Mallya, through his lawyer, sang a different tune. Failing to appear before a Delhi lower court for non-appearance in a Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) case, he sent an email that was presented to the court. He said he was unable to come down because his passport had been revoked and that he was trying hard to get the passport cancellation revoked. The case relates to the alleged payment of $200,000 to a British firm, Benetton Formula, to advertise Mallya’s company’s liquor products at the Formula One World Championship in London. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, however, asserted in court that Mallya was a fugitive from justice and was playing ‘hide and seek’, and cooking up ‘cock and bull stories’. He alleged that Mallya was ‘deliberately concealing something from the banks’, and also seemed to be of the view that he had ‘no intention to come back’. Mallya, on his part, has said in a Financial Times interview on 29 April 2016—his first after his flight from India—that by cancelling his passport and arresting him, the Indian government cannot expect to get any money. As the law took its slow course, Mallya appeared fully devoted to enjoying himself in the UK. In late May 2016, his son Siddharth posted a video that showed the father-and-son duo watching the Indian Premier League (IPL) final in London on TV. In the video Mallya is seen rooting for Royal Challengers Bangalore, a team he had established. Siddharth also mentions Force India’s third place in the Monaco Grand Prix finals. Mallya continues to hold equity in Force India. Mid-June 2016 saw Mallya at the elite Ascot races, where only thoroughbred horses compete. On 18 June, Mallya was spotted at the book release function of Mantras of Success: India’s Greatest CEOs Tell You