In a reprieve to embattled liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya, the UK High Court Tuesday 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 Rs 9,000 crores in India.
A two-member bench of the Royal Courts of Justice comprisingJustices George Leggatt and Andrew Popplewell made the conclusion after hearingthe arguments.
The bench said that the arguments can be reasonably made onsome of Westminster Magistrates’ Court Chief Magistrate Judge Emma Arbuthnot’sconclusions in her prima facie case ruling.
The High Court judges ruled that the 63-year-old formerKingfisher Airlines boss was permitted to appeal on only one limited ground tobe able to address the admissibility of some of evidence and interpretationsmade by the lower court.
They have given directions to submit a draft for the appealto proceed and ascertain the time frame for the hearing.
Ahead of the hearing, Mallya told reporters outside thecourt that he was feeling “positive”.
Representatives from the Indian High Commission in Londonwere present in court to observe the proceedings.
Mallya, accompanied by his son Sidharth and partner PinkyLalwani, watched from the bench as his barrister Clare Montgomery began byreiterating many of her arguments laid out during the extradition trial atWestminster Magistrates’ Court last year and characterised aspects of ChiefMagistrate’s ruling as “plain wrong”.
She claimed to have “chased down” and counteredmany of the claims in the case put forward by the Indian authorities anddismissed the conclusion that there was a “clear and unequivocal falsestatement” made by Mallya about profits being made by a strugglingKingfisher Airlines at the time the loans were being sought.”The conclusions are in effect a falsedichotomy… [Arbuthnot] failed to recognise that there was a straightforwardbusiness failure,” said Montgomery, as she claimed the case presented bythe Indian authorities had moved on in essence from that ruled upon by thelower court.