Business tycoon Vijay Mallya loses extradition case

Business tycoon Vijay Mallya on Monday lost his High Court appeal in London against a 2018 decision to extradite him to India to face fraud charges resulting from the collapse of his defunct company Kingfisher Airlines. The case will now go to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel for a final call.

The dismissal effectively clears the way for Vijay Mallya’s extradition to India to face the charges in the Indian courts, with 14 days for him to apply for permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court.

If he does apply, the UK Home Office would wait for the outcome of that appeal. But if he does not, under the India-UK Extradition Treaty, it would then be expected to formally certify the court order for Mallya to be extradited to India within 28 days.

The 64-year-old, whose business interests have ranged from aviation to liquor, is wanted in India over Rs 9,000 crore in loans Kingfisher took out from banks which the authorities argue he had no intention of repaying. Vijay Mallya denies the charges against him and is currently on bail.

His lawyer, Clare Montgomery, in a hearing in February said that the 2018 extradition ruling by Judge Emma Arbuthnot had “multiple errors” because she did not take into account all the evidence about the financial status of Kingfisher Airlines.

On Monday, Lord Justice Stephen Irwin and Justice Elisabeth Laing, the two-member bench at the Royal Courts of Justice in London presiding over the appeal, dismissed the appeal in a judgment handed down remotely due to the current coronavirus lockdown.

“We have held there is a prima facie case both of misrepresentation and of conspiracy, and thus there is also a prima facie case of money laundering,” the High Court concluded,” the judges ruled.