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Business News/ Companies / People/  Mallya fights UBS bid to foreclose $26.6 million London house loan
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Mallya fights UBS bid to foreclose $26.6 million London house loan

Rose Capital Ventures, the company that took out the mortgage, has failed to repay it, says UBS. Rose, based in the British Virgin Islands, is owned by a Mallya family trust

Mallya, arrested in London in April 2017, is current waging a fight in the court to block extradition to India on fraud charges. Photo: ReutersPremium
Mallya, arrested in London in April 2017, is current waging a fight in the court to block extradition to India on fraud charges. Photo: Reuters

London: UBS Group AG is trying to foreclose on a 20.4 million-pound ($26.6 million) mortgage loan on former billionaire Vijay Mallya’s London house, which overlooks the capital’s Regent’s Park.

The bank is seeking possession of the property, which Mallya used as a family home. It says Rose Capital Ventures, the company that took out the mortgage, hasn’t repaid it.

Mallya, often referred to as the “King of Good Times," hoped to turn the site — previously used as offices — into a “beautiful palatial property" that would be “very fancy," UBS’ attorney Thomas Grant told a London court Monday. “At the end of the day we are simply saying you haven’t paid your mortgage loan, as per the term, therefore we seek a remedy given to us, which is possession," Grant said.

Rose is based in the British Virgin Islands and owned by a Mallya family trust, UBS’ London court filings say, attributing the information to Mallya.

A UBS spokesman, and a lawyer representing Mallya and Rose Capital Ventures, declined to comment.

It’s the latest in a series of London lawsuits that the 62-year-old Mallya is fighting. The source of his global legal problems are more than 1 billion pounds in loans that he took out for his now defunct Kingfisher Airlines. Disputes over the loans led to civil lawsuits in India and the UK as well as criminal fraud charges.

Mallya was arrested in London in April 2017 and is waging a fight — in a different court a few miles across town — to block extradition to India on the fraud charges. At one point the tycoon had to get by on 5,000 pounds a week amid civil lawsuits to collect the money, according to court filings.

Early call

Lawyers for Mallya and Rose say UBS called the mortgage in early and gave no explanation for this, having previously given them “a legitimate expectation" that the bank wouldn’t do so. This was “wrongful" and caused Rose to be unable to repay the loan, their filings say.

UBS says it called in the loan early, in June 2016, because it had decided to “terminate its relationship" with Mallya and “associated entities" including Rose, after media reports identified Mallya as a “willful defaulter" over Kingfisher Air. In any case, the bank says, the five-year loan expired in March 2017.

Mallya, his son Sidharta and his mother Lalitha have a right to remain in the property under “an irrevocable contractual license" from Rose, which holds the property for them, according to their earlier court filings from May.

The hearing over the London property is set to continue on Tuesday, with a full trial scheduled to start in May.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.

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Published: 09 Oct 2018, 06:42 PM IST
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