UK court hears fraud allegations against Mallya

Vijay Mallya should be extradited from Britain to his home country to face fraud charges of palming off losses from his failing Kingfisher Airlines onto a state-owned bank, a lawyer acting for India told a London court on Monday.

Mallya denies any wrongdoing, and a court document showed his lawyers planned to argue that the case against him was politically motivated and aimed at quelling public anger in India over the accumulation of bad debts by state lenders.

Mallya arrived at Westminster Magistrates Court wearing a dark blue pin-striped suit and gold-rimmed dark glasses.

He was mobbed by a large crowd of Indian reporters on arrival, and again later when the building was briefly evacuated because of a fire alarm and he had to step outside.

The case against Mallya centres on a series of loans Kingfisher obtained from banks, and in particular from state-owned IDBI. Indian banks want to recover a total of about $1.4 billion that the Indian authorities say Kingfisher owes.