Sweetheart deal' no more: Vijay Mallya can't access Rs 500 crore Diageo money

NEW DELHI: The 'King of Good Times', Vijay Mallya, had a bad Monday.On Monday morning, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) registered a case of money laundering against him,Then, to make matters worse, on Monday afternoon, a Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) said the liquor baron can't access the Rs 515 crores he got from the recent sale of his spirits business to Diageo, until a loan default case with The State Bank of India (SBI) is settled.In what was called a 'sweetheart deal', Mallya sold his business to Diageo last month. The SBI had asked for the DRT's intervention in seeking the lenders' first right to the $75 million payout from Diageo to Mallya. The DRT took up the request on a priority bsis.The next hearing in the SBI case is scheduled for March 28.The SBI, which leads a consortium of 17 banks that lent money to the grounded Kingfisher Airlines, had moved the DRT to recover over Rs 7,000 crore of dues from Mallya.The bank has filed three other applications, including one seeking Mallya's arrest and the impounding of his passport, as the bank approached DRT seeking action against him for defaulting on loans.SBI has lent over Rs 1,600 crore to the now defunct airline. Since January 2012, that loan has not been serviced. Other lenders include Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Bank of India, Central Bank of India, Federal Bank, Uco Bank and Dena Bank among others.Mallya, who along with his group's companies is fighting the 'willful defaulter' tag given by various lenders in relation to money borrowed by the long-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, had said recently that he would now "spend more time in England" to be closer to his children.Mallya had said yesterday he is making efforts to reach a 'one-time settlement' with banks through additional payments to the lenders, even as he denied "personally" being a "borrower or judgement defaulter" and alleged that "disinformation campaign" was being played to make him a "poster boy" of all bad loans.Separately, the ED on Monday, registered a money laundering case against Mallya and others in connection with the alleged default of over Rs 900 crores on loans from IDBI bank.Official sources said the agency recently filed charges under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) based on an FIR registered last year by the CBI in the same case.They said while the ED's zonal office here has registered the case, sleuths are also looking at the overall financial structure of the now defunct Kingfisher airlines and a separate probe under foreign exchange violation charges could also be initiated."Mallya and others will soon be questioned. The agency has collected relevant documents from concerned authorities and the bank in question," they said.The ED has pressed charges under various sections of the PMLA against Mallya and others named in the CBI complaint.The CBI had booked Mallya, director of Kingfisher Airlines, the company, A Raghunathan, Chief Financial Officer of the airlines, and unknown officials of IDBI Bank in its FIR alleging that the loan was sanctioned in violation of norms regarding credit limits.The CBI action came as part of its wider probe into the criminal aspects of loans declared to be non-performing assets by public sector banks.The ED is looking into the "proceeds of crime" that would have been generated using the slush funds of the alleged loan fraud, they said.