Vijay Mallya's family to retain possession of luxury home in central London
India Today
A London court has ruled in favour of Vijay Mallya in a case involving the refinancing of a central London property. It said that the refinancing was a permissible transaction.
The family of Vijay Mallya will be able to hold on to their luxury London home after a UK court ruled that refinancing of a loan by a family trust firm would not be in breach of the worldwide freezing order (WFO), in place against the embattled liquor tycoon.
Rose Capital Ventures (RCV), a British Virgin Islands firm linked to the Mallya family trust which owns the Cornwall Terrace property in central London, had made an application in the London High Court which was heard last Friday.
Mallya won’t lose his London home as the court said that refinancing the loan of his house in central London does not breach a previously issued freezing-of-assets order.
Judge Simon Rainey QC ruled that the refinancing is a “permissible transaction” as it meant investment in a prime London property. "The proposed realisations are proper," the judge noted.
Mallya now awaits the decision on his asylum application while all doors to appeal against his extradition order are shut.
The legal battle by Mallya and co-defendants his mother Lalitha and son Sidhartha Mallya to hold on to the Cornwall Terrace apartment overlooking Regent’s Park in London dates back to March 2017 when the five-year term on a loan from Swiss Bank UBS expired. The bank then proceeded to redeem the GBP 2.4 million unpaid amount of the loan, which was taken out by RCV.
At a hearing in 2020, the London court confirmed that RCV re-financing its UBS loan was permitted under the WFO as it was in the ordinary and proper course of RCV’s business. That application, however, did not consider the realisation of investments owned by Mallya trust entities to enable that loan to be made to RCV.
