A UK High Court has rejected Vijay Mallya’s application to appeal against his extradition, a move that brings India closer in getting back the embattled liquor tycoon wanted in alleged fraud and money laundering charges amounting to Rs 9,000 crores.
The 63-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss had filed the application seeking “leave to appeal” in the High Court on February 14 against his extradition order, which was signed by UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid. “The application for permission to appeal was refused by Justice William Davis on 05\/04\/2019,” said a spokesperson for the UK Judiciary. “The appellant has five business days to apply for oral consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If a \nrenewal application is made, it will be listed before a High Court judge\n and dealt with at a hearing,” the spokesperson added.Mallya’s “leave to\n appeal” application had been put before Justice Davis, who was to make a\n decision on the basis of papers submitted as part of the appeals \nprocess. Now that the “judge on papers” application has been rejected by\n Justice Davis, Mallya has the option to “renew his application for \npermission to appeal” by this Friday. “If he does so , there will be an \noral hearing at which the Administrative Court will consider whether or \nnot to grant permission to appeal,” a CPS spokesperson said.
During\n the oral hearing, Mallya’s legal team and the Crown Prosecution Service\n – on behalf of the Indian government will renew their respective claims\n for and against an appeal for a judge to determine if it can proceed to\n a full hearing. While the rejection by the High Court on Friday doesn’t\n mean that the appeal process in the case has come to an end, the latest\n decision does move the case one step further in favour of India in \nbringing back Mallya, who had fled the country in 2016.
The \nlatest ruling marks a fresh legal setback for the UB Group chief who \njust last week offered to curtail his “lavish” lifestyle after a bid by \nthe Indian banks to recoup some of the nearly 1.145 billion pounds he \nowed to them as a result of the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines’ unpaid \nloans. Mallya is required by the UK court order to live within an \n“ordinary living expenses allowance” of a maximum of 18,325.31 pounds a \nweek, which he offered to cut down to around 29,500 pounds a month \nduring a separate court hearing last week. However, a consortium of 13 \nIndian banks led by State Bank of India (SBI) did not agree to his offer\n as they seek access to nearly 260,000 pounds in an ICICI Bank current \naccount in his name in London.
The judge in that case, Master \nDavid Cook, has reserved his judgment on an interim court order and is \nexpected to pronounce his final ruling in the coming weeks. “Dr Mallya \ncontinues to do all he can to support a court process in India, which \nshould see creditors paid off in full,” said
Jonathan Isaacs, \npartner at DWF Law LLP, the firm representing Mallya in the case \nagainst the Indian banks related to a worldwide freezing order. Mallya \nhas been based in the UK since March 2016 and remains on bail on an \nextradition warrant executed by Scotland Yard in April 2017.
At \nthe end of a year-long extradition trial at Westminster Magistrates’ \nCourt in London last December, Judge Emma Arbuthnot had ruled that the \n“flashy” billionaire had a “case to answer” in the Indian courts. The \njudge found there was “clear evidence of dispersal and misapplication of\n the loan funds” and accepted a prima facie case of fraud and a \nconspiracy to launder money against Mallya, as presented by the CPS on \nbehalf of the Indian authorities.
The court had also dismissed \nany bars to extradition on the grounds of the prison conditions under \nwhich the businessman would be held, as the judge accepted the Indian \ngovernment’s assurances that he would receive all necessary medical care\n at Barrack 12 in Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail. Incidentally, the jail was \nback in reference in the UK courts in another high-profile extradition \ncase recently as the likely holding cell for fugitive diamantaire Nirav \nModi, whose case is also being presided over by Judge Arbuthnot at \nWestminster Magistrates’ Court. India and the UK have an Extradition \nTreaty signed in 1992 and in force since November 1993. So far only one \nsuccessful extradition has taken place from the UK to India under the \ntreaty – that of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, who was sent back to India in\n 2016 to face trial in connection with his involvement in the \npost-Godhra riots of 2002.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A UK High Court has rejected Vijay Mallya’s application to appeal against his extradition, a move that brings India closer in getting back the embattled liquor tycoon wanted in alleged fraud and money laundering charges amounting to Rs 9,000 crores. The 63-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss had filed the application seeking “leave to appeal” in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58703,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58701\/revisions\/58703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}