The Bahamas has agreed to extradite fugitive financier Victor Kozeny to the US, the Bahamas state prosecutors’ office has confirmed.
Mr Kozeny, who bought Irish citizenship under the now defunct "passports for investment" scheme, will be back in court later this month for the start of the extradition process to New York, where he is wanted for setting up a fraudulent $100 million (€85 million) privatisation scheme and bribing government officials in Azerbaijan.
US investors lost tens of millions of dollars in the scheme, allowing New York federal prosecutors to take a case under US corporate law.
It emerged during his extradition battle that Mr Kozeny, originally from the Czech Republic, had six Irish passports and used three of them to enter and leave the United States while seeking investors for his Azerbaijan scheme.
MR Kozeny received Irish citizenship in 1995 by investing €1.27 million in a software company under the then government's "passports for investment scheme".
Bahamas state prosecutor Francis Cumberbatch confirmed this weekend that Bahamian foreign minister Fred Mitchell had approved the extradition.
Mr Kozeny had fought an unsuccessful court battle since his arrest at his home in Lyford Cay in the Bahamas on October 5th, arguing that he was a citizen of Ireland and Venezuela,and an honorary diplomat for Grenada.
Grenada later confirmed that it had previously revoked Kozeny's diplomatic status. Mr Kozeny was charged in a 27-count indictment in US District Court in Manhattan in October. He is accused of bribing Azerbaijan officials with over $11 million dollars from 1997 to 1999.
