Former United Spirits boss Vijay Mallya can now appeal extradition to India

Vijay Mallya, the fugitive former head of India’s United Spirits, can appeal against extradition.

(Photo: Wiki)

After hearing arguments from Clare Montgomery QC, Mallya’s counsel, Lord Justice Leggatt and Mr Justice Popplewell, together granted him permission appeal to the High Court in London that the decision in December 2018 by Emma Arbuthnot, the chief judge at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, was flawed.

Her ruling that he be extradited was subsequently upheld by British Home Secretary Sajid Javed in February.

Mallya’s case will now be heard by the Court of Appeal in London at a date to be set, probably towards the end of the year. He will remain on bail until the hearing.

Mallya is wanted in India to face charges of fraud and money laundering involving £1.15 billion associated with loans to his Kingfisher Airlines which collapsed into bankruptcy in 2012.

Clare Montgomery QC, representing Mallya, argued that Arbuthnot had made her decision on the basis of a case with which he was not being charged by Indian prosecutors. That led to the judge making findings “premised on serious, and in some cases very obvious, errors”.

Under English law, extradition can only be considered on the basis of formal charges set out in the warrant issued by prosecutors in the country concerned. Any other charges on which an accused might later be tried must be set aside.

Montgomery said the Indian government’s case against Mallya was “flawed and based on wilfully false allegations”.

Delivering the ruling, Lord Justice Leggatt said Mallya’s position that Arbuthnot had wrongly concluded that he had a case to answer was “reasonably arguable”.

The court, however, dismissed Mallya’s contentions that he would not receive a fair trial in India and the charges against him were politically motivated. In court papers the former billionaire said that he had been portrayed as “the personification of all of India’s financial ills.”

Mallya, who previously dubbed himself “King of Good Times”, said in court filings that he had been “deliberately set up as the lightning rod of public anger at India’s bad debts” in a process encouraged by politicians in the governing party.

He attended the hearing accompanied by his son Siddharth and partner, the former Kingfisher hostess Pinki Lalwani.

In separate actions this year, Indian courts have ordered confiscation of assets well in excess of the £1.15 billion the state-owned banks say Mallya owes them.

Before entering court he said that he had more than enough money to repay all his creditors and “begged” the Indian government to “take it so that we can all get on with our lives”.

After the ruling he tweeted: “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.”

In court Montgomery again argued that the collapse of Kingfisher was a business failure brought about by events immediately after the global financial crisis in 2008, not from any criminal intent.

She rejected Arbuthnot’s finding that Mallya misrepresented Kingfisher’s financial situation to the consortium of creditor banks, saying that he had made the company’s financial position “abundantly clear”.

She also alleged that “the Government of India supplied documents late. By then the magistrate had already given her decision.” That made the extradition ruling unjust, she argued.

Mallya was arrested in London in April 2017 after a consortium of 17 banks accused him of wilfully defaulting on £1.15 billion debts accumulated by Kingfisher Airlines, essentially refusing to repay the state-owned banking consortium despite having the means to do so.