LONDON: A British court on Monday ruled Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya, the owner of Kingfisher beer and head of the Force India Formula One team, can be extradited to his homeland to face fraud charges.
Mallya has been fighting to remain in Britain but judge Emma Arbuthnot said he had misrepresented how loans received from banks would be used and therefore had a case to answer. She said bankers had been "charmed" by a "glamorous, flashy, famous, bejewelled, bodyguarded, ostensibly billionaire playboy" into losing their common sense.
Mallya will be able to make a final appeal against the ruling to Home Secretary Sajid Javid. Mallya left India in March 2016 owing more than $1 billion after defaulting on loan payments to a state-owned bank and allegedly misusing the funds.
The loans from the state-owned IDBI bank were intended to bail out his failed carrier Kingfisher Airlines. Mallya said in July that he had made an "unconditional offer" to an Indian court in a bid to settle the charges, but denies that was an admission of guilt. "I cannot understand how my extradition decision... and my settlement offer are linked in any way," he wrote on Twitter on Thursday. "Wherever I am physically, my appeal is ´please take the money´. I want to stop the narrative that I stole money," he added. Lawyer Mark Summers, representing the Indian authorities, said during an earlier hearing, that "the focus of our case is on his conduct, how he misused the banks".