Fugitive businessman Victor Kozeny is to remain in a prison in the Bahamas after a court heard that he has six Irish passports and was a serious flight risk.
Magistrate Carolita Bethel said on Friday she was satisfied that Kozeny could not be trusted to stay in the Bahamas and ordered that he remain in Fox Hill prison in Nassau, which human rights groups say is one of the toughest prisons in the Caribbean.
She also ordered that the Bahamian Foreign Ministry submit evidence in support of the US request for Kozeny's extradition by December 5th.
Her decision greatly hastens the extradition proceedings, as Bahamian prosecutors had feared that Kozeny might have been able to delay the process for years.
Mr Kozeny, the most controversial recipient of Irish citizenship under the former "passports for investment" scheme, is wanted in the US on fraud and bribery charges relating to an oil company privitisation in Azerbaijan in which US investors lost tens of millions of dollars. He was arrested at his Bahamian home on October 5th after a prosecutors' office in Manhattan indicted him on the bribery charges.
Ms Bethel said she was not satisfied with arguments put forward by Mr Kozeny and his lawyer, Philip Davis, that Mr Kozeny would continue at live at his home in Lyford Cay in the Bahamas.
She agreed with prosecutor Francis Cumberbatch that Mr Kozeny appeared to be able to produce foreign passports "at will" and was a serious flight risk.
Last week, the court heard that Kozeny has received six Irish passports since 1995, when he first took Irish citizenship under the "passports for investment scheme".
The court also heard that he used three of these passports simultaneously to conduct business in the US during the planned privatisation of the Azerbaijan state oil company.
Kozeny (42) told the court that the first passport contained a valid travel visa to enter the US. When that expired, he still needed it to show that his US travel visa was valid, even while using a second Irish passport. He said his third Irish passport contained his Bahamian residency stamp, which he needed to re-enter the Bahamas when returning from the US, he claimed.
Mr Kozeny's lawyer said two of Kozeny's Irish passports were still valid. The court also heard that Kozeny had Venezuelan and Czech Republic passports.
Last Wednesday, he also claimed diplomatic immunity as a former honorary ambassador of Grenada, even though Grenada has stripped him of citizenship. Mr Kozeny is wanted in his native Czech Republic on another alleged privatisation scheme in which 80,000 investors lost hundreds of millions of dollars.
