The Debt Recovery Tribunal here will tomorrow pronounce its order on the pleas of SBI-led consortium of banks for recovery of over ₹9,000 crore from beleaguered liquor baron Vijay Mallya in the Kingfisher Airlines case.
DRT Presiding Officer K Sreenivasan said this while hearing an Interlocutory Application pertaining to the case.
“I will be pronouncing the verdict on the pleas of banks for recovering money in this case tomorrow,” he said.
The presiding officer in a recent directive had reserved orders on the Original Application filed by the consortium and also 30-odd Interlocutory Applications, including several by Mallya and his companies, without specifying any date.
The order tomorrow will bring the curtains down on the nearly three-year legal battle in the tribunal by the consortium, comprising 17 banks, to recover the money owed by the defunct airlines.
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.
During the prolonged hearing, the DRT had disposed some of the IAs filed by either side.
The DRT had on March 7 last year, restrained Mallya from withdrawing $75 million exit payment from British liquor giant Diageo as part of a severance package for quitting Diageo-owned United Spirits (USL) as its Chairman under a “sweetheart deal“.