India Today: New Delhi: Saturday,
February 25, 2017.
Troubles are
mounting for embattled businessman Vijay Mallya as the Central Information
Commission has asked the Oriental Bank of Commerce and several probe agencies
to explain a loan extended to his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines.
The one-time
billionaire, who moved to Britain last March, is wanted in India in connection
with loan defaults of Rs 9,000 crore. The decision of the CIC, dated February
10, came against the backdrop of an RTI application in which the petitioner had
asked from OBC the "total outstanding of M/s Kingfisher Airlines"
towards the bank as also "details of security/collateral held by your
bank", apart from "third-party audit conducted" by the bank to
"verify the value of the collateral of M/s Kingfisher Airlines".
The
petitioner, Gurugram-based information activist Harinder Dhingra, had also
asked what the bank had done to recover the loan, the names of officials who
had processed it and the notings on the file of the loan. M/s Kingfisher did
not respond to Mail Today's queries despite repeated attempts till the filing of
the story.
Dhingra has
accused the OBC of having lent the once premier air carrier Rs 54.52 crore
without any collateral as guarantee for the loan.
PETITIONER
SMELLS FOUL PLAY
"It is
strange that such innocuous information that pertains to public money be denied
in the name of hampering investigation," he said.
"It is
also strange that the bank does not know of what happened to the money it lent
to the company- it doesn't know if the company has been declared a defaulter.
There is at this moment not even the preliminary investigation has been
launched and yet we can't get information."
The bank,
however, did not furnish any information apart from how much the airlines owed
it, stonewalling behind Section 8 (1) h of the RTI Act, arguing that "the
matter was pending investigation before different investigating agencies and
disclosure of the information could hamper the investigation process."
Mallya, once
called the King of Good Times for cavorting with celebrities and publishing a
much-sought-after swimsuit calendar, has been mired in a growing series of
legal battles following the collapse of his carrier and was last month charged
with conspiracy and fraud by the CBI.
CIC NOTES
LOOPHOLES' IN BANK'S CONDUCT
In another
revelation, the CIC order also noted that the bank did not even know whether it
had declared Kingfisher Airlines a "willful defaulter". "…the
representative of the Respondents (OBC) was unable to state whether the
borrower had been declared a willful defaulter by the Respondent Bank or
not".
The
commission, however, took strong exception to the bank's denial to furnish
information sought by the RTI application by simply invoking the stonewalling
clause of the RTI Act.
"It is
clear from the above (CIC quotes from Delhi High Court judgment of 2007) that
information cannot be denied by the CPIO by merely invoking Section 8 (1) h,
without giving adequate justification as to how disclosure of the information
would impeded the process of investigation," it said. "The
representative of the Respondents did not make any submissions to provide such
a justification…" Unsatisfied with the answer received, the commission
has asked the three investigation agencies-CBI, ED and SFIO-to put their
submissions regarding why and how, if at all, the information could be
detrimental to the investigation, before the next hearing of the case, on April
3.
The
commission also asked that M/s Kingfisher Airlines also be represented at the
next hearing, in case they want to make any submission. While the bank might
have denied releasing the details to the petitioner, the commission asked the
central public information officer (CPIO) of the bank to "file to the
commission a report regarding the current status of the loan, the amount
outstanding and whether the borrower has been declared a willful defaulter or
not." The report is to be filed by March 20.
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