Bad boy billionaires, sound of the name gave me the first impression of flamboyant rich kids who lavishly spend their parents’ wealth, were reckless and had a lot of fun.
I wasn’t entirely wrong; these are some responsible big men of India who were responsible for playing with the country’s wealth, taking an intensive loan to fuel their desires, money laundering, skipping taxes, looting the extremely poor; to name a few.
These episodes follow the same pattern of storytelling; the first half shows the company doing extremely well and the rich men enjoying their lives. As soon as you start wondering, what could go wrong? The bubble burst and the second half shows the tumbling empire and how these people have been gobbling money under the nose of the ablest government of one of the world’s superpower. Along with a summary, I’ll also share what I learned from each of these episodes.
The King of Good Times
The first episode happens to be of a very widely known name brand, Kingfisher. The memory of it I have is MS Dhoni and Virat Kholi singing -Ulala ulello- and promoting Kingfisher beverages during IPL.
It features the owner of the brand, Vijay Mallya who seem to have shaped the word flamboyant and pretentious. For a society that regards alcohol as a taboo, he has risen beyond the general people’s beliefs and reshaped the culture around alcohol consumption. He is also seen often criticized for his lavish lifestyle.
However successful his other business venture has been, the initial downfall came with Kingfisher Airlines, ‘It was like his baby who needed constant nurturing.’ As recalled by Sid Mallya, son of Vijay Mallya. In simple words, in a bid of rescuing the airlines, he took a lot of loans providing estimated books of account and overstating heavy sales and revenue. The money was happily provided to this renowned businessman and as he couldn’t pay it back, he was heavily in debt, an estimated nine thousand crore INR.
The worst part is not paying the employees of the airlines for 6 months straight. Even when a wife of a pilot hanged herself blaming the company for not paying her husband and having no money, nothing was done to Vijay Mallya. Fun fact, every other employee of another country was paid except for India. A few months after the protest, Vijay Mallya had his sweet 60 birthday and as the man he was, the party was big. Very big. Astronomical would be an understatement.
However, the now unemployed staff of Kingfisher Airlines weren’t happy, even not on his birthday, because even though he was declared bankrupt and still had no money to pay them, he could bundle a couple of million dollars to throw lavish birthday parties. What are you? 9 years old?
Due to not paying his debt, multiple lawsuits were filed against him and like every other bad boy who escapes India, he went to the UK and is currently there hurtful that he was ‘wrongly accused.'
Favourite words: 1. I am the brand
2. Reporter: Sir, you have been compared with Donald Trump
Mallya: I’m nowhere near bankrupt though
Diamond is a man’s best friend
The second episode is kind of boring as compared to other episodes. It's about Nirav Modi who is called the Diamond King of India. One of the reasons due to which this episode is slightly unvaried is probably because Modi is a private individual and doesn’t reveal much in his interviews.
He started with a diamond sourcing and trading company, later went on to make jewellery, some world-renowned and even printed on the cover pages of big magazines. (Golconda Lotus Necklace, included on the cover of Christie’s catalogue in Hong Kong)
He wanted to expand his now-good-doing business and needed capital, a mere private company couldn’t have risen that much capital. He could have simply gone Public Limited and raised capital but he didn’t. He chooses the fastest way.
In simple words, India has this document where you can easily do the transactions with other countries and have to pay comparatively lesser tax and other money exchange fees. But to issue it you need to keep some form of security. But he needed money to invest in his business, he had no spare money to freeze in form of security.
Now, right around that time, Indira Gandhi had nationalized a lot of big banks and the biggest problem in Public Corporations is the small earnings or the little salary to the already demotivated worker. ‘What are we to lose’ mindset too.
He started bribing these officials and forged and avoided a lot of paperwork. I paused for some time and thought to myself instead of bribing all the officials he could have simply paid the legal duties. I concluded that once you are in the loop, you just are there and maybe the bribing money was smaller. We’re talking about 2 billion dollars atleast.
Suddenly, the bank official retired and the next batch of workers failed to provide the same type of flexible environment. Just days before the news broke out of his fraud, he had already fled to the United Kingdom along with his family which led to speculations that there was some inside informant who leaked the information beforehand and helped him escape. Right now, like Mallya, he is in the UK awaiting a trial in November.
Favourite words: The diamond industry is build on trust
The world’s largest family
The third episode happens to be the most interesting one which raised all types of emotions in me, for a moment I felt like Raavan. It shows how a small boy from a small village was able to loot the poorest Indians. It’s regarding Sahara Roy, the CEO of Sahara India Pariwar which ran on Pyramid Scheme which runs as long as people keep coming and investing, when you’ve done looting the entire poor people of India and basically have climbed the mountain, where do you do? Downwards.
The one thing I noticed is he’s a real narcissist where every posters and advertisement regarding the company would feature him and only him along with his followers. This guy built himself as a real-life resort, bigger than my school. This guy was portrayed as a God where he was untouchable and extremely giving. It also led me to question the beliefs of various gurus of India like Sadh Guru and other swamiji s who have built million-dollar industries and have a huge bhakta following, not just fans. The portray of untouchability of these Gurus is alarming.
He also started investing in multiple other projects like Airlines, TV channel etc. Then he did what Nirav Modi didn’t do, the company went public limited.
Now private company gives you secrecy, nobody questions you’re decisions but as soon as the company hit the stock market, the government asked a simple genuine question, ‘Where is your income coming from?’
The answer was from the multiple households who had happily invested in the company and was newly introduced to the concept of compound interest and said that the money invested in the company years ago was being multiplied and they were reinvesting. So, they didn’t withdraw the money but waited for it to be multiplied and multiplied and multiplied. It was very frustrating to watch it and I felt terrible, the background music didn’t help and I shed few tears.
After failing to appear at his court hearing, he was arrested and spend 2 years in jail, he’s currently out on parole.
The best scene was where this journalist speaker laughs at Roy when he heard that Roy was writing a book in jail as he wants to be portrayed like Mahatma Gandhi who continued to fight while in jail.
Even after his jailing, there are records of many names of household who invested unknown and it is unlikely that they will get back their money. Ughh!
Some questions
Why do most of the bad boys who escape India go to the UK?
As much as the legal system is really strong and the country provides political asylum, it has a strong policy regarding human treatment and human rights. They don’t let the country take away the prisoners unless the country can guarantee that the jails are good to sit at and food is good and the police constable implies by the human rights policy. The scenes from Slumdog Millionaire and many other movies play in the back of my mind. So, these bad boys know as long as they can magnify this situation, they are secure in the UK.
Another example of biased
Another fact I see worth taking is Coronil, the medicine brought up by Ramdev Baba which was said to cure the coronavirus, without having proper information nor scientific research about it. Later when WHO released a statement that it has never approved nor had any medical firmness, I thought it would be the downfall of Patanjali but boy! I should never have underestimated the power of the biased Indian government. This was false information, fooling the public which would have served as a criminal offence had it been any other country but Ramdev Baba got away with a small fine after pressure was asserted on the government.
The failure of government
The Indian government is said to be a rich people government who favours the high and mighty, PM Narendra Modi has also been mocked by saying he favours NRI, I remember a phrase from Kunal Khanna’s standup comedy, ‘Why do I have to vote for Narendra Modi for PM, why can’t I vote Mukesh Ambani directly?’. The recent case of the farmer protest and government allowing the big corporations to directly influence and exploit poor farmers is just another example.
How did they get away with it?
The rich people in India can get away with the biggest of scandal and trouble but a normal citizen is punished brutally by the police force for the simplest of things like pickpocketing. A statement I remember said by Niraj Modi, ‘I don’t think I need to be punished because far more people have done bigger things and gotten away with it.’
The bitter reality is the richest in India might still be exploiting the poor class even today but many things have not come out and it’s utterly disgusting.
Other Reviews
I did read other reviews and reviews of people who have been associating with financial fraud cases for a long time. They didn’t seem so happy because the whole episodes lacked courage and displayed just what was already in the media and the moviemakers didn’t want to dig deeper. A point I agreed with it is it focuses on drama prospect because it is what ultimately sells but it would have been better if it had also focused on aspects of how the whole government failed to pinpoint the whole scandal and realized after only having lost a lot of money which led to some banks merging as to stable it.
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