When I was editing dna, a newspaper based out of Bombay, a couple of years ago, we had broken several stories about the Indian liquor tycoon, Vijay Mallya. The cases against Mallya had been many, most of them to do with money laundering. This is one of the favourite crimes of the super rich of India and, I suspect, one that is popular with billionaires all over the world. When we broke the Mallya stories, there was not much reaction, either from the banks that had loaned him large sums of money, nor from the government agencies like the Enforcement Directorate. Then one day, in March, the flamboyant Mallya – his famous Kingfisher beer was branded as the King of Good Times- just upped and left for England. And all hell broke loose. On his part Mallya, I believe, did the right thing. He protected himself. India has no extradition treaty with the UK. If the Indian government had truly wanted to hold him back, the stories that the media broke would have acted as an alarm service. But the banks and the concerned government agencies had chosen not to wake up and arrest him. Last weekend, the Indian financial crime investigating agency, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) took possession of Mallya’s assets worth Rs 6,630crores. These included Mallya’s farmhouse near Bombay, land and houses in Bangalore – Mallya’s hometown-, shares and fixed deposits. Mallya owes close to Rs9000 crores to a group of banks. He had taken the money mostly to finance his Kingfisher airlines. The airline is now history. It did take off, but flew into crippling financial storms, and was grounded. The money that Mallya borrowed on its behalf, the government now says, had gone into acquiring properties abroad. The obvious question then as now is: why hadn’t the financial institutions do due diligence before issuing huge tranches of cash to Mallya, and keep and eye on where the money was going. No action has so far been taken on the officials responsible for the laxity. It’s after all the tax payers’ money. Contrast this with the banks’ thuggish conduct when a typically middle-class Indian defaults payments on his house or car. The short point that Mallya episode brings up has not been quite explored-despite the publicity that anything associated with Mallya normally receives. Most of the very rich business barons of India run their operations on money borrowed from the public. If government watchdogs actually kept a watch on the routes of the money after issuance, they might find that siphoning is the order of the day. Clearly, the banks have failed in the primary duty of taking care of the public’s money. The ED now says the assets they have attached in Mallya’s case “are proceeds of crime.” The next stage, they say, is filing a prosecution case against Mallya and put him on trial in a Special Court. Now, whatever a Special Court means, the UK, where Mallya has taken refuge, would not come under its jurisdiction. That in turn means for all practical purposes Mallya would be at large and drinking English stout. Personally, I think that’s quite fair. If Mallya has lived a great life on borrowed public money, and if that money can be recovered through his assets, the financial damage is repaired. Putting him in prison is just the dressing on the cake. The question is not how to reach the punitive stage where Mallya will be shackled and dragged to a smelly jail in Bangalore or Delhi. The question is, is the public’s money in safe hands? Are the officials in charge of the tax payers’ savings making it yield returns for the investors, or using it to oil the fortunes of a few individuals generous to their upkeep? So far the answer seems to be the latter. If so, sooner or later, we in India will be seeing more Mallyas crawling out of the woodwork. Courtesy Khaleej Times