The UK high court on Thursday (July 18) called for a hearing of Vijay Mallya’s appeal against extradition on February 11, 2020.
London: Embattled liquor tycoon, Vijay Mallya's appeal in the UK high court against his extradition order, has been listed for a three-day hearing from February 11, 2020, the UK court said on Thursday (July 18).
The 63-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss Vijay Mallya, had won a reprieve earlier this month when a two-judge panel at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, permitted him to appeal against the extradition order of a lower court to face fraud and money laundering charges amounting to an alleged Rs 9,000 crore in India.
On July 2, Justices George Leggatt and Andrew Popplewell concluded that "arguments can be reasonably made on some aspects of the prima facie case presented by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), on behalf of the Indian government".
The ruling based on that material by Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot in her extradition order of December 2018, which was signed off by UK home secretary Sajid Javid earlier this year, is therefore now set for a full appeal hearing in the higher court.
By far the most substantial ground is that the senior district judge was wrong to conclude that the government had established a prima facie case, noted Judge Leggatt.
Mallya's counsel, Clare Montgomery, had successfully contested the basis on which Judge Arbuthnot had arrived at certain conclusions.
She claimed that the judge had been "plain wrong" in accepting some of the Indian authorities' assertions that Mallya had fraudulent intentions when he sought some of the loans for his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, that he made misrepresentations to the banks to seek the loans and had no plans to pay them back.
Montgomery also questioned the admissibility of some of the evidence produced during the extradition trial at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London.
The high court judges accepted the broad arguments and directed her to submit a draft for the appeal to proceed to a full hearing, a time-frame for which has now been set for February 2020.
Mallya had said he felt vindicated by the ruling and repeated his offer to pay back the money owed to the Indian banks.
"I still want the banks to take all their money, do what they have to do and leave me in peace," he said.
Meanwhile, the liquor tycoon remains on bail on an extradition warrant executed by Scotland Yard in April 2017, involving a bail bond worth £650,000 and other restrictions on his travel.
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