Junior Digest

The ED is mulling attaching domestic assets and shares worth about Rs 9,000 crore owned by liquor baron Vijay Mallya in connection with its money laundering probe against him and others in the IDBI bank loan fraud case.

Officials said today the agency has already begun the exercise of identifying and valuing the country-wide immovable assets of the beleaguered businessman in order to place them under attachment under the criminal provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

They said the agency will also inform market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) about its move to similarly attach his shares in various Indian companies so that no third party rights are created.

The officials from the Enforcement Directorate(ED) said that as per preliminary assessment done the value of the assets that would be provisionally attached will be around Rs 9,000 crore which is equal to the total default of bank loans which he is accused of.

They said Mallya’s assets in the form of bungalows, costly vehicles, bank balances and others have already been assessed by agency sleuths probing the case.

Banks will also be taken on-board before attaching these assets under PMLA laws, they said, adding the agency does not want to “jeopardise” their interests over these assets through which they are planning to get back their loans.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has been wanting to make Mallya join investigations “in person” in the over 900 crore IDBI loan fraud case in which it registered a PMLA case early this year.

It has virtually exhausted all legal options to make Mallya join the probe including issuance of a non-bailable warrant against him from a Mumbai court based on which it made the requests for the revocation of his passport and subsequent deportation bid to bring back the beleaguered businessman from the UK.

However, in a setback to India’s efforts to expeditiously get back Mallya, UK has made it clear that the liquor baron cannot be deported and asked India to seek his extradition instead.

The British government has said it acknowledges “the seriousness of allegations” against Mallya and was “keen to assist” the Indian government in this case.

Commenting on the matter, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said in Parliament that India will now have to initiate extradition process after a charge sheet is filed to bring back the embattled tycoon to face money laundering charges as well as recovery of the Rs 9,400 crore of loans to his defunct Kingfisher Airlines.

Cancellation of passport “does not result in automatic deportation, that is the stand taken by UK,” Jaitley said.

Sources, however, said filing a charge sheet is a time taking process and hence some other legal options will surely be mulled to make Mallya join probe in India, not only by the ED but by the CBI too.

The agency is also preparing to issue Letters Rogatories (LRs) to certain countries, including South Africa and the UK, for obtaining information on his overseas assets.

Official sources said the agency has obtained details about immovable and movable assets held by the United Breweries (UB) Chairman in a number of countries and investigators are looking at countries like South Africa, UK, the US, Hong Kong and France, as part of its probe conducted till now in the case.

Mallya had left India on March 2 using his diplomatic passport.

The ED has registered a money laundering case against Mallya and others based on an FIR registered last year by the CBI.

@Agency report.

worlds-oldest-axe-fragment-australian-archeology

Australian scientists today claimed to have unearthed a fragment of the world’s oldest known ground-edge axe, created up to 49,000 years ago, around the time humans first arrived on the continent. The latest discovery, about the size of a thumbnail, was made by Archaeologists of Australian National University (ANU) in Western Australia’s remote Kimberley region.

ANU’s archaeologist Sue O’Connor said the axe dates back between 46,000 and 49,000 years, around the time people first arrived on the continent. “This is the earliest evidence of hafted axes in the world. Nowhere else in the world do you get axes at this date” O’Connor from the university’s School of Culture, History and Language, said.

“In Japan, such axes appeared about 35,000 years ago. But in most countries in the world, they arrived with agriculture 10,000 years ago.” O’Connor said this discovery showed early Aboriginal technology was not as simple as has been previously suggested.

A hafted axe is an axe with a handle attached. “Australian stone artefacts have often been characterised as being simple. But clearly that’s not the case when you have these hafted axes earlier in Australia than anywhere else in the world” she said. O’Connor said evidence suggests the technology was developed in Australia after people arrived around 50,000 years ago. “We know that they didn’t have axes where they came from. There are no axes in the islands to our north. They arrived in Australia and innovated axes” she added.

Once unearthed, the flakes were then analysed by Peter Hiscock from the University of Sydney. “Since there are no known axes in Southeast Asia during the Ice Age, this discovery shows us that when humans arrived in Australia they began to experiment with new technologies, inventing ways to exploit the resources they encountered” Hiscock said, adding “The question of when axes were invented has been pursued for decades. He said although humans spread across Australia, axe technology did not spread with them.

“Axes were only made in the tropical north. These differences between northern Australia, where axes were always used and southern Australia, where they were not, originated around the time of colonisation and persisted until the last few thousand years when axes began to be made in most southern parts of mainland Australia” Hiscock said.

The axe fragment was initially excavated in the early 1990’s by Professor O’Connor at Carpenter’s Gap 1, a large rock shelter in Windjana Gorge National Park in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. New studies of the fragment have made it public that it comes from an axe made of basalt that had been shaped and polished by grinding it against a softer rock like sandstone. This type of axe would have been very useful for a variety of tasks including making spears and chopping down or taking the bark off trees.

@ Agency report.