Reacting to liquor baron Vijay Mallya's offer to sell properties to pay banks dues, Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar on Tuesday said if the former really wanted to repay his dues, he had many years to do so. "If Mallya wanted to pay to the banks, I think he had.many, many years in which he could have done so," Akbar said during a press conference. Mallya on Tuesday issued a statement saying he “will continue to make every effort to settle with the public sector banks” and claimed that the bulk of the claims of the banks were on account of interest. He further said that he was being targeted and has been made the "Poster Boy" of bank default and a “lightning rod of public anger”. Read | Vijay Mallya offers to sell assets to repay bank loans, says he has become ‘poster boy’ of default Mallya, who is wanted in India for bank loan default, also claimed interference of "politically motivated extraneous factors" with his efforts to settle the dues and said that there was nothing he could do in this case. Breaking his two years of silence on the matter of Rs 9,000-crore Kingfisher Airlines' loan default case, Mallya denied that he was a wilful defaulter. His statement follows the Enforcement Directorate's filing of an application before a special court in Mumbai seeking to declare Mallya‘fugitive economic offender’, under the recently promulgated Fugitive Economic Offenders Ordinance, 2018. Under its provisions, the ED has sought an order for confiscating all of Mallya’s properties including those indirectly controlled by him, even before the trial begins against him. This is the first application in the country under the Ordinance so far. Also Read | Vijay Mallya releases two-year-old letter to PM Modi to ‘put things in right perspective’ Mallya, who is currently residing in London, is undergoing an extradition trial in a court there over fraud and money-laundering charges by Indian authorities.
