Fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya had stated that he had met up with the Finance Minister before leaving India. This was said on Wednesday at London’s Westminster Magistrate Court steps where Mallya was attending a hearing on a case.
“I met the Finance Minister before I left, repeated my offer to settle with the banks”
See VIDEO uploaded by ANI:
#WATCH “I met the Finance Minister before I left, repeated my offer to settle with the banks”, says Vijay Mallya outside London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court pic.twitter.com/5wvLYItPQf
— ANI (@ANI) September 12, 2018
He, however, clarified that he met the Finance Minister before leaving for the Parliament & had not scheduled any meetings with him.
Arun Jaitley, who was the finance minister in 2016 when Mallya left India, denied the liquor baron’s claim.
Since 2014, I have never given him an appointment to meet me and the question of his having met me does not arise,” Finance Minister Jaitley said in a Facebook post.
“The statement is factually false in as much as it does not reflect the truth,” he asserted.
Jaitley said Mallya “misused” the privilege of being a Rajya Sabha MP to catch him in corridors of Parliament on one occasion while he was walking out of the House to go to his room.
READ ALSO: Arun Jaitley Slams Reports of Absconding tycoon Vijay Mallya Met Him
He said Mallya while walking alongside, “uttered a sentence that ‘I am making an offer of settlement’. Having been fully briefed about his ‘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.'”
“I did not even receive the papers he was holding in his hand,” Jaitley said.
Mallya claimed that he was disliked by both BJP M& Congress, and that he was a political football and that he had made a settlement before the Karnataka High Court.
OPPOSITION LASHES BACK
The Opposition has claimed that the government was ‘hiding’ information.
The Congress said, “Mallya’s comment he met Jaitley confirms our assertion that government was fully complicit in a flight of people like him and others. The government must explain how Vijay Mallya was allowed to leave India”. The party also demanded the details of the meeting between Mallya & Jaitley to be revealed.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, in a tweet, said, “Why did the Finance Minister hide this information till now?”
“PM Modi meets Nirav Modi before he flees the country. FM meets Vijay Mallya before he flees India. What transpired in these meetings? People want to know,” Kejriwal tweeted.
CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said, “It’s a fact that all of us had known earlier. Whatever denials government may issue, it confirms that all those who looted public money by taking loans from banks and absconded, not one of them happened to leave the country without the knowledge of the government,”
“They (govt) have to own up to the fact that they allowed this loot to happen and the fact that they are allowing this loot to happen, more are looting,” Yechury added.
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