Seeks confiscation of his passport in a case pertaining to evasion of tax amounting to R33 crore by Kingfisher airlines in 2011; meanwhile, Vijay Mallya has left the country and is probably in the UK
The Service Tax Department yesterday moved the Bombay High Court requesting confiscation of Vijay Mallya’s passport for evasion of service tax to the tune of R33 crore. However, the move comes more than a week after the ‘wilful’ defaulter fled the country.
Vijay Mallya at a city event last month. File Pic
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Along with Mallya, the petition has made former Kingfisher Airlines CEO Sanjay Aggarwal, CFO A Raghunathan and Assistant Vice President T R Venkatadi party to the crime. The department, through its counsel Advait Sethna, told Justice CV Bhadang that a lower court had granted Mallya and Aggarwal provisional bail of Rs 50 lakh.
Kingfisher Airlines was supposed to pay Rs 79 crore as service tax from April to November 2011. While the airlines did make some ad hoc payment, it was yet to clear R33 crore which it had already collected from the fliers. A lower court heard the matter following which Mallya and Aggarwal were granted bail in December 2014. The airline had then claimed that most of the money collected as service tax was used for emergency expenses, as the airline was in financial trouble to pay for fuel to operate flight services.
“Diversion of money collected on behalf of the government for day-to-day activities of the airline amounts to an offence of criminal breach of trust and cheating,” said Sethna, adding, “We have prayed to the court to grant us permission to recover the nation’s money.” The next hearing has been scheduled for Friday.
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