19th - 25th April 2025 www.garavigujarat.biz
BUSINESS
A CONSORTIUM of Indian banks, led by State
Bank of India, on Wednesday (9) won their
court appeal in London to uphold a bankruptcy
order against Vijay Mallya in a long-standing
legal battle seeking repayment of a debt owed
by his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines.
UK high court judge Anthony Mann ruled
in favor of the banks to allow an appeal heard
in February, while refusing two applications
seeking permission to appeal filed by the
69-year-old businessman, declared a fugitive
and wanted for fraud and money laundering
charges in India.
‘The banks’ pleaded position on security
was one which they were entitled to adopt,’
Mann ruled. ‘The bottom line in relation to this
is that the bankruptcy order stands.’
Law firm TLT LLP, representing the banks,
noted that the ruling confirmed the banks did
not hold security over Mallya’s assets and that
the bankruptcy petition was correct.
The court also found that the realizations
from assets attached by the Enforcement Di-
rectorate, the financial crime fighting agency,
were conditional and did not discharge the
debt under English law.
The case dates back to 2017 when the banks
registered the debt recovery tribunal’s judg-
ment in the English courts, which pertained
to a personal guarantee Mallya had provided in
relation to loans made to Kingfisher Airlines.
Indian banks win appeal in Vijay Mallya case
INDIA’S seafood exporters are preparing to
ship 35,000-40,000 tonnes of shrimp to the
US with orders remaining stable after presi-
dent Donald Trump paused a planned 26 per-
cent reciprocal tarif, reducing the duty to 10
percent, industry ofcials said on Monday (14).
‘There is a lot of relief now as we are at par
with other exporters to the US. Now the ship-
ments that were held back will be processed,’
Seafood Exporters Association of India secre-
tary general K N Raghavan told PTI.
About 2,000 containers of shrimp that had
been delayed are now being readied for export
following Trump's decision on 9 April to pause
the higher tarifs, he said.
INDIAN IT giant Tata Consultancy Services
(TCS) reported on Thursday (10) weak-
er-than-expected results for the March quar-
ter, as lingering demand weakness weighed on
the company's operations.
TCS, the leader of India's $254 billion IT
sector, earns the bulk of its revenue from
Western clients but demand has slowed in
recent years due to high inflation and global
uncertainty.
The company's net profit for the three
months ended 31 March fell 1.69 percent year-
on-year to $1.42bn.
RESERVE BANK OF INDIA cut interest rates
on Wednesday (9) and policymakers warned
of ‘challenging global economic conditions’.
The cut, the second this year, aims to boost
a slowing economy grappling with the impact
of US president Donald Trump’s tarifs.
The central bank said the benchmark repo
rate, the level at which it lends to commercial
banks, would be reduced by 25 basis points to
6 percent.
Easing inflation concerns over the last few
months have allowed the RBI to focus on perk-
ing up the Indian economy, whose growth has
slowed in the last few quarters.
Trump’s protectionist trade policies will
likely add to growth pressures and present a
challenge for Indian policymakers.
Reserve Bank governor Sanjay Malhotra on
Wednesday (9) said he is more worried about
the impact of global tarif war on growth than
inflation.
While New Delhi is not a manufacturing
powerhouse, experts believe that high US
FUGUTIVE jeweller Mehul Choksi has been
arrested in Belgium and will file an appeal for
release, his lawyer told Reuters on Monday
(14), seven years after details of his role in one
of India's biggest bank frauds became public.
The Indian government had sent a request
for Choksi’s extradition prior to his arrest, a
source with India's Enforcement Directorate
told the news agency.
Punjab National Bank (PNB), India’s second
largest state-run lender by assets, had an-
nounced in 2018 that it had discovered alleged
fraud worth $1.8bn at a branch in Mumbai.
The bank had filed a criminal complaint
with the federal investigative agency against
several entities including billionaire jeweller
Nirav Modi and Choksi, his uncle and the man-
aging director of Gitanjali Gems, saying they
had defrauded PNB.
Indian federal police filed fraud charges
against Choksi, Nirav Modi and others in
connection with suspected involvement in
fraudulent transactions that led to huge losses
for PNB.
The two diamond tycoons have denied any
wrongdoing.
Choksi said in a letter in 2018 that the
‘investigating agencies were acting with
pre-determined minds and interfering with the
course of justice.’
Choksi's lawyer Vijay Aggarwal told Reuters
on Monday: ‘An appeal will be filed for his re-
lease, on grounds that he is undergoing cancer
treatment and is not a flight risk.’
He said that Choksi had not committed any
ofence in Belgium.
Nirav Modi fled India in 2018 before details
of his alleged role in the case became public. He
was arrested in Britain in 2019 and remains in
custody there although he has lost one extra-
dition appeal.
Modi grew up in Belgium's diamond polish-
ing hub Antwerp, and Choksi used to visit the
city frequently, even before the financial scam
was discovered.
Diamond traders in Mumbai have said Ant-
werp would have been an ideal place for Chok-
si to take refuge, as he knows people there and
remains connected to those in the business.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer hailed the
contributions of British Sikhs across all walks
of life in the UK in his Baisakhi greetings from
10 Downing Street on Sunday (13).
Having hosted a special reception earlier
last week to mark the festival symbolizing the
birth of the Khalsa, Starmer posted a video on
social media showcasing the festivities along
with his Baisakhi message.
‘I’m always very humbled when I see that
work, care, beacon of light in our communities.
A visible sign of the values of Sikhism, compas-
sion and courage, but also service or sewa, and
that’s particularly important to me,’ he stated.
Starmer said his government will always
stand with British Sikhs and ‘against bigotry’.
India’s central bank cuts rates
Choksi arrested in Belgium on
India’s extradition request
Baisakhi: Keir Starmer hails British Sikhs
Tarif pause: India to
ship 40,000 tonnes of
shrimp
TCS posts small
profts dip
NEWS
India needs ‘nuclear energy
renaissance’: Holtec CEO
INDIA needs a ‘nuclear en-
ergy renaissance’ and the US
is interested in helping the
country develop a nuclear in-
frastructure as both nations
have a vital shared interest in
this area, Holtec CEO Dr Kris
Singh has said, voicing opti-
mism that things will move
forward under prime minister Narendra Modi.
‘India and the US have shared strategic in-
terest in clean energy... Nuclear power should
be a unifier and India should naturally take
the lead there. For that, India needs to have
an exportable technology,’ Singh told PTI in
an interview at the sprawling Krishna P Singh
Technology Campus in Camden, New Jersey,
on Sunday (13).
Holtec International is a
diversified energy technol-
ogy company recognized
as the leading technology
innovator in the field of car-
bon-free power generation,
specifically commercial nu-
clear and solar energy.
In September last year,
Singh had met Modi during his visit for the
UN General Assembly session and they had
discussed Holtec’s plan to expand manufac-
turing in India.
The company had last month announced
that the US department of energy has granted
it a specific authorization, with the Indian
concurrence, to sell its flagship small modular
reactor SMR-300 for deployment in India.
tarifs will hurt billions of dollars of Indian ex-
ports across diferent sectors, including gems,
jewellery and seafood.
The RBI's monetary policy committee said
in a statement that ‘recent trade tarif related
measures’ had ‘exacerbated uncertainties’ and
clouded the ‘economic outlook across regions’.
‘In such challenging global economic con-
ditions, the benign inflation and moderate
growth outlook demands that the MPC contin-
ues to support growth,’ the statement added.
The central bank cut interest rates for the
first time in nearly five years in February 2024,
as it sought to boost an economy that has been
weighed down by muted urban consumer sen-
timent, a sluggish manufacturing sector and
lower government expenditure.
Vijay Mallya
Mehul Choksi
A nuclear reactor