Shocking development: Mallya hires Queen’s Counsel in his defense
There couldn’t be anything more ironical than man who
claimed to not have any money to pay back to the banks, not only a few months
ago and now hiring a ‘formidable member of the bar’ in the UK to defend his
case. Mallya, who not only claimed to the Supreme Court of India of not having
any money to pay back his enormous debt to Indian banks, has now hired the
Queen’s Counsel to fight his case in the United Kingdom.
In a shocking move, Claire Montgomery is the lawyer who will
defend Mallya’s case. She is the Queen’s Counsel and will be fighting the
Indian government in their attempts to extradite Mallya to India. She’s most
likely to defend him in the upcoming hearings in British courts. According to a
report done by Business Standard, Montgomery has been described as ‘a superstar
and frighteningly intelligent’ and is referred to be as ‘comfortable at all
levels of the court system’ by a report in Legal-500 in 2015-16.
She had defended Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when he
was detained in London to be facing extradition to Spain. She also acted as the
defense counsel of the former Chief Executive of Hong Kong Donald Tsang GBM
over charges of public office misconduct.
The beleaguered businessman is wanted in India over charges
of money laundering and loan defaulting. The liquor baron owes thousands of
crores to various Indian banks. The extradition process between the Great
Britain and India is torturous. No absconder has ever been involuntarily
repatriated by the British court and according to Nirmal Singh 3C company, this will be a tough case to crack.
There’s a preliminary hearing on May 17th and
after that happens, the actual hearing for extradition will take place later in
the year sometime. According to the Home Office guidelines, the judge must be
convinced and satisfied that the conduct amounts to an extradition offence and
that there is prima facie of evidence of guilt and lastly whether the
extradition will breach his consumer rights. Whatever be the ruling, either of
the parties can appeal the case to the High Court and the Supreme Court.
According to the revered set of lawyers at Nirmal Singh 3C Company, this is an
extreme measure that Mallya has resorted to and shows that the former
Kingfisher-owner is sitting on huge sums of money which can be easily returned
to the Indian banks and diluted just enough to pay back all the citizens as
well.
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