New Delhi, December 18 (). In a major step under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has ensured recovery of Rs 311.67 crore of pending dues of former employees of bankrupt Kingfisher Airlines Limited (KAL).
This amount has been received from the sale of attached properties and will now be distributed to the employees through the official liquidator.
This breakthrough was made possible by the order dated December 12, 2025 of the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT)-I, Chennai, directing the release of the amount received from the sale of attached shares earlier returned by the ED to SBI. ED had initiated investigation based on CBI FIR of bank fraud against Vijay Mallya, KAL and related companies. The investigation revealed that a large portion of the loans taken by the company were diverted to repay other loans, foreign payments and were wrongly diverted.
ED attached assets worth Rs 5,042 crore under PMLA and an additional Rs 1,694 crore under CrPC. In all, the ED returned assets worth Rs 14,132 crore to the SBI-led bank consortium, forming an asset pool. Vijay Mallya was declared a fugitive economic offender in 2019.
ED coordinated with SBI and other stakeholders to give priority to the dues of the employees. SBI filed an application in DRT, after which this amount was released to the employees.
Earlier, on the first day of the winter session of Parliament, the Lok Sabha was told that 15 people, including Vijay Mallya of Kingfisher Airlines, Nirav Modi of Firestar International and Nitin Sandesara of Sterling Biotech and Sterling SEZ, were declared fugitive economic offenders for causing a loss of more than Rs 57,000 crore to different banks till October 31.
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