Chennai: No sooner had the UK Home Secretary ordered the extradition of liquor baron Vijay Mallya, the latter has announced that he will lodge an appeal on the decision.
The Indian multimillionaire chairman of Kingfisher beer has allegations of £1bn fraud to his name.
Mallya who lives in a £11.5 million mansion at Hertfordshire, said on Twitter, ‘I could not initiate the appeal process before a decision by the Home Secretary. Now I will initiate the appeal process.’
He has been fighting the extradition order and has previously dismissed the allegations that he fled India leaving a trail of £977 million worth of debts as ‘ludicrous’. He has said he made an ‘unconditional’ offer to pay what he owed in full in July 2018.
Sajid Javid, the UK Home Secretary, on Monday formally ordered Mallya, who owns two multimillion UK properties and until last year had two superyachts, to be extradited, stating that the 63-year-old businessman is “accused in India of conspiracy to defraud, making false representations and money laundering offences”.
A judge ruled in December 2018 that Mallya had misrepresented how loans from Indian banks were used and referred the decision on his extradition to Javid.
Senior district judge Emma Arbuthnot described Mallya as a “glamorous, flashy, famous, bejewelled, bodyguarded, ostensibly billionaire playboy who charmed and cajoled these bankers into losing their common sense and persuading them to put their own rules and regulations to one side”.
Mallya is alleged to have knowingly misled largely India State-owned banks about the fortunes of his failing Kingfisher airline, before laundering the cash to fund his Formula One team and other projects. India’s enforcement directorate has been investigating the tycoon’s £977m debts linked to the airline, which went bust in 2012.