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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

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