Published 16:47 IST, October 6th 2017
Republic Exclusive: SFIO report reveals Vijay Mallya gave favours to Sonia Gandhi, Farooq Abdullah
Republic TV has accessed an exclusive Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) report which reveals the truth about Mallya’s political friend circle and how favours were extended to the most powerful politicians in his heydays.
- India News
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Republic TV has accessed an exclusive Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) report which reveals the truth about Vijay Mallya’s political friend circle and how favours were extended to the most powerful politicians in his heyday. Two of the bigwigs who were named in the report are Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Former Jammu Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah.
The report, which was submitted 38 days ago, relates to mail correspondences unveiling favours extended to Mallya's political connections and power centres
According to the report, free upgrades were given to Sonia Gandhi and her relatives every time they flew with Kingfisher Airlines. A mail from Vijay Arora of Kingfisher Airlines' sales team to the CFO and others for travel by Mrs Sonia Gandhi and her family in Kingfisher airline flight, uncovers that how their economy tickets were converted into first class tickets even without any extra payment for the upgrades.
Interestingly, the permission for the upgrades were granted by Vijay Mallya personally. Ironically, all this was happening at a time when the UPA-2 government was getting embroiled in scam after scam.
Page 24 of the secret SFIO document reveals about the non-payment of a charter service used by Farooq Abdullah during 2008 Jammu and Kashmir election.
A mail dated November 29, 2008, which details the internal correspondence between Arun Singh, A Raghunathan, the CFO and Vijay Mallya, states that the senior Abdullah was never meant to pay for the chopper.
On the same day, Kingfisher Airlines had written to the chopper operator, stating Farooq's payment was cleared by his friend Vijay Mallya.
The secret document states the style of functioning of high flying criminal Vijay Mallya revealing how he was signing on everything personally - from economy to business upgrades to charter planes.
Earlier, on October 3, Vijay Mallya was arrested then granted bail in a money laundering case.
Mallya, whose now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines owes more than Rs 9,000 crore to various banks, had fled India on March 2, 2016. In January, an Indian court ordered a consortium of lenders to start the process of recovering the loans. India had given a formal extradition request for Mallya as per the Extradition Treaty between India and the UK through a note verbale on February 8. While handing over the request, India had asserted that it has a "legitimate" case against Mallya and maintained that if an extradition request is honoured, it would show British "sensitivity towards our concerns".
Updated 13:10 IST, September 14th 2018