 "Vijay Mallya")
In a bid to lay its hands on part of the Rs 6,963-crore bank loan allegedly stashed away by embattled liquor baron Vijay Mallya, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has moved a special court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) cases seeking issuance of Letter Rogatory (LR) to seven nations where the agency believes Mallya might have diverted funds to.
The LR, a request for legal assistance, will ask the authorities of the seven countries — Ireland, France, Mauritius, the US, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and South Africa — to furnish information about Mallya’s accounts.
“We had filed the requisition in the PMLA court for the judicial assistance. Anticipating the court order by the first week of June,” a senior ED official told Business Standard.
LR is typically sent to obtain evidences, related information with regard to purchase, registration and status of individual assets. The LR would be sent through the Ministry of External Affairs.
The ED is also working on the extradition process, a lengthy process, and can be initiated after a chargesheet has been filed before an appropriate court and the court has sought the presence of the accused to face trial in the case. All extradition requests must be supported by documents and information according to the provisions of the extradition treaty.
The agency has been wanting to make Mallya join investigations in the Rs 950-crore IDBI loan deal, in which it had registered a criminal case under the anti-money laundering law earlier this year.
Investigators have exhausted most of the legal options to make Mallya join the probe, including issuance of a non-bailable warrant against him from a PMLA court, based on which it made the requests for the revocation of his passport and subsequent deportation bid to bring back the businessman from UK.
