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In a major reprieve for embattled liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya, the UK High Court allowed him to appeal against his extradition order signed off by the UK home secretary Sajid Javid to face alleged fraud and money laundering charges amounting to ₹9,000 crores in India.
After hearing arguments from Mallya’s barrister Clare Montgomery, a two-member bench of the Royal Courts of Justice concluded that reasonable arguments could be made on some aspects of Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot’s ruling in favour of a prima facie case of fraud and money laundering against the 63-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss last December.
The bench comprising Justices George Leggatt and Andrew Popplewell handed down its judgment at the end of the hearing seeking permission to appeal against extradition to face charges in India .
While the judges dismissed a majority of the five grounds as well as any ground to challenge UK home secretary’s sign off on the extradition order, they did grant permission for Mallya’s defence team to present arguments on aspects of the evidence relied upon to build a case of fraud against Mallya.
They have given directions to submit a draft for the appeal to proceed and ascertain the time frame for the hearing.
The case will now proceed to a full hearing stage, the time-frame for which is to be determined in the coming weeks.
Talking to reporters outside the court, Mallya described the ruling as a “vindication”.
He told the media that he has always maintained that the charges against him were fabricated and repeated his offer to pay back the debt owed to Indian banks.
“I have always maintained that these are false charges, fabricated charges and have no merit. And I think my point has now been vindicated,” said Mallya.
After all the mockery made of me I would respectfully ask those interested parties to focus on the Divisional Bench Judgement in England today allowing me to challenge the core of the false prima facie case filed against me by the CBI. Witch-hunt ?
— Vijay Mallya (@TheVijayMallya) July 2, 2019
“Two senior-most judges of the High Court have given me permission to appeal the decision of the Westminster Magistrate in the prima facie case on the merits of the charges against me by the government of India… I wanted to win on the prima facie grounds because that is central to everything and deals with the government’s charges against me and the Division Bench felt that decision was appeal-able, and that means the most to me,” he said.
“I still want the banks to take all their money, do what they have to do and leave me in peace,” he added.
Despite the good Court result for me today, I once again repeat my offer to pay back the Banks that lent money to Kingfisher Airlines in full. Please take the money. With the balance, I also want to pay employees and other creditors and move on in life.
— Vijay Mallya (@TheVijayMallya) July 2, 2019
Mallya also called on the Indian government to review its policies to support India’s “fragile” aviation industry in the wake of the recent collapse of Jet Airways.
