Vijay Mallya, the fugitive tycoon on Wednesday said he had a “meeting” with Arun Jaitley, the current Finance Minister before fleeing India in the year 2016, a sensational assertion that was tried putting to rest by the finance minister by terming it to be “factually false”.
The liquid baron who has been facing the charges of money-laundering and fraud was speaking to the reporters outside a court in the UK that was hearing his case in extradition to India when he was asked if he was “tipped off” for leaving the country.
He responded, “I left because I had a scheduled meeting in Geneva. I met the finance minister before I left, repeated my offer to settle with the banks. That is the truth”, without naming the minister. He stated that he had also told the minister that he was leaving for London.
Arun Jaitley was the finance minister at the time when Mallya left India in the year 2016, and vehemently refuted the claims in a Facebook post and while making his remarks to the media. He stated that he never gave him an appointment after becoming a minister in the year 2014 but the fugitive tycoon misused his position being a parliamentarian to approach him once in the parliament.
Terming Mallya’s offers to settle the loans that are overdue of Rs. 9000 crore as “bluff offers”, the minister stated that he did not even take the papers that Mallya was carrying during that small encounter.
Jaitley posted on Facebook, “Since 2014, I have never given him any appointment to meet me and the question of his having met me does not arise”.
He further added, “He misused that privilege (of being an MP) on one occasion while I was walking out of the House to go to my room. He paced up to catch up with me and while walking uttered a sentence that ‘I am making an offer of settlement’… Having been fully briefed about his earlier ‘bluff offers’, without allowing him to proceed with the conversation, I curtly told him ‘there was no point talking to me and he must make offers to his bankers”.
However, Mallya backpedaled and blamed the media for misrepresenting the facts and essentially confirmed Jaitley’s version of events. But he reiterated that he had stated it to the finance minister that he was flying to London.
Mallya’s these claims have sparked off a vigorous opposition against the government with Congress President Rahul Gandhi urging PM Modi to investigate the accusation and calling for resignation from Arun Jaitley until the inquiry was done.
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