Dubai court authorises British hedge fund trader Sanjay Shah’s extradition to Denmark

A Dubai court has granted the extradition of British hedge fund trader Sanjay Shah to Denmark to face the law in an alleged tax fraud in the Scandinavian country.

However, his extradition is unlikely to take place immediately as Shah’s representatives said they would challenge the ruling of the emirate’s court of appeal.

The businessman was arrested in Dubai in June over the suspected €1.7 billion (£1.51 billion) dividend tax fraud and money laundering, but the emirate's Court of Appeal in September rejected Danish authorities’ request for his extradition.

However, Dubai’s attorney general moved the Court of Cassation against the ruling. It sent the case back to the Court of Appeal for reconsideration by a different bench which authorised his extradition on Thursday.

Danish foreign minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said the ruling “hopefully” brought his country’s authorities “a big step closer to bringing Sanjay Shah to justice". Rasmussen said “it required “a sustained effort from Danish diplomacy to reach this point”.

Horizons & Co, a law firm representing Shah, said the decision confirmed he “can be extradited from the UAE".

"We now have 30 days in which to appeal today's judgement in the Court of Cassation, the highest Court in the UAE," the firm’s managing partner Ali Al Zarooni said in a statement.

The Court of Cassation’s decision, “which we anticipate in the next two months”, would be final, he said.

Shah is suspected to have run a scheme for three years from 2012 in which foreign entities pretended to own shares in Danish companies and claimed tax refunds.

His alleged fraud scheme, known as 'cum-ex trading', involved submitting thousands of applications to the Danish Treasury on behalf of companies and individual investors from several countries to receive dividend tax refunds, according to a Dubai Police statement.

Media reports said Shah, who founded the London-based hedge fund firm Solo Capital, denied any wrongdoing or having violated Danish law.