If reports are to be believed, a group of banks, led by State Bank of India has decided to launch a debt recovery process against the cash strapped Kingfisher Airlines. According to sources, bankers are likely to sell off the airline company’s non-crore assets, which consists of  Kingfisher House in Mumbai and Vijay Mallya’s villa in Goa.

Sources say that the lenders are hopeful of recovering about 1.35 billion rupees through the sale of properties. A senior executive from SBI said that the Kingfisher has been granted a 15 days time span to come up with ‘concrete steps’ that will help to improve operations. The decision was taken following a meeting on Thursday that reviewed Kingfisher’s financial position. According to an SBI official, “the lenders might be able to recover around Rs 135 crore from the property sale of Kingfisher”.

However, Kingfisher has been on the denial mode, reiterating that all reports are fake. “Following misleading and factually incorrect reports appearing in a section of the press, Kingfisher Airlines Ltd would like to clarify that it is patently wrong and false to claim or state that banks have started recovery proceedings after a meeting of the consortium of bankers today,” said company in a statement. “The meeting was scheduled as an update meeting and there was no discussion on commencement of recovery proceedings,” it added.

The staement further added that “Kingfisher House (in Mumbai) has been lying vacant after the staff moved to our new offices at The Qube in Mumbai, and at that time itself, on our own accord, we approached the banks with a proposal to liquidate this unutilised asset and at today’s meeting we raised the issue of this pending approval.”

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