壞賬泥潭中 印度尋歡之王變成欠債大王

NEW DELHI — Three months before he left India with $1.4 billion in unpaid bills hanging over his head, the man who called himself the King of Good Times gave a party for himself.

新德里——這個自稱是“尋歡之王”(King of Good Times)的男人離開了印度，名下掛着14億美元未付的賬單；在動身的三個月之前，他給自己舉辦了一個派對。

Vijay Mallya, a beer-and-airline magnate who publishes a swimsuit calendar and cavorts with celebrities, invited the pop singer Enrique Iglesias, the Bollywood star Sonu Nigam and some top Indian business figures to his villa in the coastal Indian state of Goa to celebrate his 60th birthday.

維賈伊·馬爾雅(Vijay Mallya)是啤酒和航空業大亨，一本泳裝日曆的出版人，常與名人尋歡作樂。他邀請流行歌手恩裏克·伊格萊西亞斯(Enrique Iglesias)、寶萊塢明星索努·尼加(Sonu Nigam)以及一些印度商界名流前往他在果阿邦海岸的別墅，一起慶祝他的60歲生日。

“My biggest assets are my friends,” he told the revelers, according to a local media report, “and they are all here tonight.”

“我最大的資產就是我的朋友，”據當地媒體報道，他告訴狂歡者說，“他們今晚都在這裏。”

The party — for Mr. Mallya and for the rest of corporate India — is now over. Banks in India and elsewhere are pressing Mr. Mallya to get their money back. Authorities accuse him of money laundering, bribing bank officials, defaulting on loans and other misdeeds.

派對現在已經結束。無論是對馬爾雅，還是其他印度企業，都是如此。印度以及其他地方的銀行要求馬爾雅歸還欠它們的款項。當局指控他洗錢、賄賂銀行官員、拖欠貸款，還有其他一些不當行爲。

Last weekend Indian authorities canceled Mr. Mallya’s passport, nearly a week after a court in Mumbai issued a warrant for his arrest. On Thursday, India’s Foreign Ministry said it would ask Britain — where authorities believe he is staying — to deport him.

孟買法庭簽發了對他的逮捕令，將近一週之後，印度當局於上週末取消了他的護照。本週四，印度外交部表示將要求英國——當局認爲他目前待在那裏——將他遣返。

Mr. Mallya is now widely pilloried by the news media and by some politicians in India as one of the worst examples from a corporate borrowing binge that has mired the country in bad debt. Economists and government officials say heavy corporate debt and bad bank loans are holding back growth and harming Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious economic agenda.

如今，新聞媒體和印度的一些政界人士普遍指責馬爾雅是公司借貸狂潮最臭名昭著的典型之一。正是這股狂潮導致印度陷入了壞賬的泥潭。經濟專家和政府官員稱，高額的公司債務和銀行不良貸款正在抑制增長，破壞印度總理納倫德拉·莫迪(Narendra Modi)野心勃勃的經濟議程。

“We hide the sickness and ultimately it’s the poor who suffer,” said K. C. Chakrabarty, a former deputy governor of India’s central bank. “We are addressing Vijay Mallya. He’s not the problem. He’s the symptom of the problem.”

“我們掩蓋弊端，最終是窮人受苦，”前印度央行副行長K·C·沙克拉巴迪(K. C. Chakrabarty)說。“我們正在解決維賈伊·馬爾雅的問題。但他本身並不是問題的所在。他只是問題的症狀。”

Mr. Mallya, who left India last month, disputes accusations by Indian lawmakers and lenders that he fled the country to avoid bad debts. “I am an international businessman,” he said on Twitter. “I travel to and from India frequently. I did not flee from India and neither am I an absconder. Rubbish.”

上月離開印度的馬爾雅不同意印度議員和債權人稱他逃離印度是爲了躲避壞賬的指控。“我是一個跨國商人，”他在Twitter上說。“我頻繁進出印度。我沒有逃離印度，也不是潛逃者。一派胡言。”

Even in a time when China, Europe and other places grapple with bad debt, the depths of India’s once-hidden problems are notable. Pressed by the central bank in September to come clean about their debt woes, India’s banks are reporting billions of dollars’ worth of loans that most likely will not be repaid.

儘管中國、歐洲和其他一些地方都在努力應對壞賬問題，但印度一度被掩蓋的深層次問題仍是值得注意的。去年9月，印度央行敦促該國銀行清理各自的債務問題。眼下，印度銀行通報的極有可能無法收回的貸款價值數以十億計美元。

Credit Suisse estimated that bad loans in the final months of last year totaled nearly $128 billion, making up more than 11 percent of outstanding loans, and said India’s banking system had still more “unrecognized stress.”

瑞信(Credit Suisse)估計，去年最後幾個月的壞賬總額接近1280億美元，佔未償還貸款的11%以上。瑞信稱印度的銀行體系還面臨着更多“尚未被外界發現的壓力”。

The pain has rippled outside the country. Standard Chartered, a British bank, said in February that its India unit lost nearly $1 billion last year. The bank says it is selling problem loans.

印度債務問題的影響已經蔓延到了國外。英國渣打銀行(Standard Chartered)曾在2月表示，其在印度的分公司去年虧損近10億美元。該銀行稱正在出售問題貸款。

Diageo, the British spirits maker, has also been hit, after guaranteeing a $135 million loan last year from Standard Chartered to a company affiliated with Mr. Mallya. Diageo says it is pursuing the matter.

英國烈酒生產商帝亞吉歐(Diageo)也受到了影響。去年，渣打銀行向一家隸屬於馬爾雅的公司提供了1.35億美元貸款，帝亞吉歐爲其提供了擔保。該公司稱正在追查此事。

The sour loans are raising questions about whether India’s financial system could deal with the sort of debt crisis that hit the United States and Europe in 2008. “We’re coming so late into the too-big-to-fail issue,” said Susan Thomas, assistant professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research in Mumbai and a member of the country’s bankruptcy law reform committee.

不良貸款令外界對印度的金融制度心生疑慮，擔心它無法應對美國和歐洲在2008年遭遇的那種債務危機。“我們遇到‘大到不能倒’這個問題的時間太晚了，”孟買英迪拉·甘地發展研究院(Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research)助理教授、印度破產法改革委員會成員蘇珊·托馬斯(Susan Thomas)說。

As in China, which is dealing with its own corporate debt hangover, India’s troubles stem from its efforts to spur growth after the 2008 global financial crisis. Regulators loosened fiscal and monetary policies and allowed many industries to restructure loans rather than let them go sour. It also allowed a moratorium on interest payments. Lenders responded, and over the next four years bank lending to nonfinancial companies roughly doubled.

和正在解決公司債務遺留問題的中國一樣，印度的問題源自其在2008年全球金融危機爆發後，爲刺激增長而採取的一系列措施。監管機構放寬了財政和貨幣政策，允許很多行業重組債務，而不是讓它們變成壞賬。印度還允許延期支付利息。債權人做出了迴應。在接下來的四年裏，銀行發放給非金融公司的貸款大致增加了一倍。

But people inside and outside the country increasingly worried about rising defaults and banks’ ability to meet new global financial stability requirements. In September, Raghuram Rajan, India’s top central banker, ordered lenders to provide a full accounting.

但是，印度國內外人士越來越擔心拖欠債務的情況會增多，銀行無力滿足全球金融穩定的新要求。去年9月，印度央行行長拉古拉姆·拉詹(Raghuram Rajan)要求放款機構提供完整賬務。

Mr. Mallya — who in India is often compared to Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur — is one of India’s most famous names. His company, the United Breweries Group, makes Kingfisher beer and sells everything from alcohol to chemicals and fertilizer. He has a personal stake in India’s only Formula One team. He is a regular presence on the party circuit, and made headlines 10 years ago when he held a lavish birthday party at which the singer Lionel Richie was the star performer.

馬爾雅在印度很出名，經常與英國企業家理查德·布蘭森(Richard Branson)相提並論。他的公司聯合釀造集團(United Breweries Group)生產翠鳥牌啤酒(Kingfisher)，並銷售酒精飲料、化學品和肥料等各種產品。他個人在印度唯一的一級方程式賽車隊持有股份。他是派對圈的常客，10年前舉辦的一場奢華生日請到歌手萊昂內爾·裏奇(Lionel Richie)獻唱，登上了報紙頭條。

“I work hard and I play hard, too,” he once said. “There is nothing wrong with that.”

“我努力工作，也放肆玩樂，”他曾經這樣說，“這沒什麼錯。”

When the post-2008 lending binge hit, Mr. Mallya saw a chance to help one of his newer businesses: airlines. His Kingfisher Airlines was initially modeled on the low-cost American carrier JetBlue, with an all-economy configuration that included seat-back TVs, unheard of on Indian domestic flights.

2008年後的貸款狂潮開始，馬爾雅發現它可以幫助自己的新生意：航空公司。他的翠鳥航空(Kingfisher Airlines)最初是效仿美國廉價航空公司捷藍(JetBlue)，採用全經濟艙配置，配有當時印度國內航班上從未有過的座椅後背電視。

Mr. Mallya quickly added a lavish business class to Kingfisher. Roomy seats came with champagne glasses filled with cider, since India forbids alcohol on domestic flights. The airline was a pet project of Mr. Mallya’s; he examined the in-flight napkins and interviewed some of the prospective flight attendants himself.

馬爾雅很快給翠鳥航空增加了一款奢華的商務艙。機上座位寬敞，供應用香檳酒杯盛放的蘋果汁——因爲印度禁止國內航班供應酒精飲料。馬爾雅特別青睞這個項目，親自檢查機上餐巾，並面試部分乘務員。

But Kingfisher Airlines suffered from an inefficient mix of planes and tough competition, which increased when it started flying internationally. Capitalizing on the looser lending practices, the airline persuaded its lenders to restructure its debt. Two years later, in 2012, Kingfisher stopped flying in the face of high fuel prices and a global slowdown.

但是由於機型組合效率低，開飛國際航線後競爭更加激烈，翠鳥航空陷入困境。它利用更寬鬆的貸款政策，說服放款機構重組它的債務。兩年後，2012年，面對高昂的燃油價格和全球經濟衰退，翠鳥航空停飛。

Kingfisher owed at least $1.4 billion in loans, much of it to state-controlled banks, as well as back pay to former employees and other bills. Because Mr. Mallya and his United Breweries Holdings backed some of the loans, creditors began pressing them for repayment. The dispute began to wind its way through the courts. Banks tried to seize Mr. Mallya’s assets, including his estate in Goa.

翠鳥至少欠下14億美元貸款——大多是借自國有控股銀行——另外還有前僱員的欠薪和其他未付賬單。由於部分貸款的擔保人是馬爾雅以及他的聯合釀造控股公司(United Breweries Holdings)，所以債權人開始催促他們償還。訴訟開始在各個法院展開。銀行試圖凍結馬爾雅的資產，包括他在果阿邦的地產。

Late last year authorities raided Mr. Mallya’s homes and offices in Mumbai, Bangalore and Goa. As his lavish lifestyle came under scrutiny, he began to say less publicly. “Once a media witch hunt starts it escalates into a raging fire where truth and facts are burnt to ashes,” he said in March on Twitter.

去年年底，印度當局突然搜查馬爾雅在孟買、班加羅爾和果阿邦的家和辦公室。隨着奢華的生活方式遭到監視，他開始減少公開發言。“媒體迫害一旦開始，就會逐步升級爲熊熊烈火，把真相燒爲灰燼，”今年3月，他在Twitter上說。

By early March, banks had asked India’s highest court to seize Mr. Mallya’s passport. By then he had already left, setting off criticism. “How did he run away from the country?” asked Rahul Gandhi, vice president of India’s main opposition party, the Congress party. “How did you allow him to escape?”

到3月初，已經有多家銀行要求印度最高法院凍結馬爾雅的護照。那時他已離開印度，從而引發批評。“他是怎麼逃出國的？”印度主要反對黨國民大會黨(Congress party)副主席拉胡爾·甘地(Rahul Gandhi)問道，“你們怎麼能允許他逃跑？”

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in Parliament that the country’s banks were seeking to recover “every penny” from Mr. Mallya.

財政部長阿倫·賈伊特利(Arun Jaitley)在國會上說，印度多家銀行正努力從馬爾雅那裏拿回“每一分錢”。

Indian officials have continued to warn about the impact of debt on the economy.

印度的官員們繼續警告債務對經濟的影響。

“Debt is very much like a dynamite,” said Mr. Rajan, the central banker, in December. “It is an instrument which is very useful in right places and explosive in others.”

“債務很像炸藥，”印度央行行長拉詹去年12月說，“用對了是利器，用錯了就會造成破壞。”