Vijay Mallya, the multimillionaire former owner of the Force India Formula One team and self-proclaimed “King of the Good Times”, can be extradited to India to face allegations of fraud.

Mallya, 62, chairman of the Indian brewery giant UB Group, is wanted in his home country in relation to £1bn of unpaid debts incurred by his now-defunct Kingfisher Airline. Mallya, who was once known as the “Branson of Bangalore” for his business and sport empire, denied any wrongdoing. He has been fighting to remain in the UK, where he lives in a £11.5m mansion in the sleepy Hertfordshire village of Tewin.

However, the senior district judge Emma Arbuthnot ruled on Monday that there was a case to be answered and referred it to the home secretary to decide whether or not Mallya should be extradited.

Arbuthnot said Mallya had misrepresented how loans he received from banks would be used. In her judgment passed at Westminster magistrates court, she said the bankers had been charmed by 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 state-owned banks about the fortunes of the failing airline, before laundering the cash to fund his Formula One team and other projects.

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India’s enforcement directorate has been investigating the tycoon’s debts linked to the airline, which amount to £977m.

A lawyer for Mallya previously argued that the fraud allegations were politically motivated and fitted a pattern of corruption charges surfacing in Indian election years.

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation opened a criminal investigation into Mallya in 2015 and the Metropolitan police’s extradition unit arrested him in April last year. He had entered the UK on a valid passport in March 2016.

The Indian prime minister had singled out Mallya, accused of fleeing the country owing about £1bn to banks and employees of his failed Kingfisher Airlines, of ripping off India and Indians.

Narendra Modi said: “There is no place for corruption in India. Those who looted the poor and middle classes will have to return what they have looted.” Modi’s government has described Mallya – who used to travel the globe on a private jet with VJM painted in gold on the engines and wingtips – as a “fugitive from justice”.

Mallya became a poster boy for greed in India when he held a lavish two-day 60th birthday party at his huge beachfront Kingfisher Villa in Goa in 2015. The party, which reportedly cost more than $2m (£1.56m), included performances by the Bollywood singer Sonu Nigam and Enrique Iglesias, who sang on stage with Mallya.

Raghuram Rajan, who was then the governor of India’s central bank, said: “If you flaunt your birthday bashes even while owing the system a lot of money, it does seem to suggest to the public that you don’t care.”

Since his self-imposed exile in the UK, Mallya has said tales of his high-rolling lifestyle are “bollocks”. He told the FT during an interview at the Dorchester hotel last year: “It’s nonsense – a figment of everybody’s imagination. I am a very private, simple guy.”

After his arrest in September 2017, Mallya abandoned his $95m superyacht the Indian Empress in Malta. The yacht’s 40 crew were left unpaid, until a Maltese court ordered the sale of the vessel, and the crew were finally paid earlier this month.