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Breather for Vijay Mallya as UK court permits family to keep London home

Family of Vijay Mallya will be able to hold on to their plush London home after a UK court ruled that refinancing of a loan by a family trust firm would not be in breach of the worldwide freezing order (WFO), in place against the embattled liquor tycoon. 


Rose Capital Ventures (RCV), a British Virgin Islands firm linked to the Mallya family trust, which owns the Cornwall Terrace property in central London, had made an application in the London High Court which was heard last Friday. 


Judge Simon Rainey QC ruled that the refinancing is a “permissible transaction” as it meant investment in a prime London property. “The proposed realisations are proper,” the judge noted. 


The legal battle by Mallya and co-defendants – his mother Lalitha and son Sidhartha Mallya – to hold on to the Cornwall Terrace apartment overlooking Regent's Park in London dates back to March 2017 when the five-year term on a loan from Swiss Bank UBS expired. The bank then proceeded to redeem the GBP 2.4 million unpaid amount of the loan, which was taken out by RCV. 


At a hearing in 2020, the London court had confirmed that RCV re-financing its UBS loan was permitted under the WFO as it was in the ordinary and proper course of RCV's business. That application, however, did not consider the realisation of investments owned by Mallya trust entities to enable that loan to be made to RCV. 

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