Fugitive Thai banker Rakesh Saxena was back in a B.C. courtroom Monday to continue a 12-year fight against extradition on embezzlement charges, but this time he was in a wheelchair.
Saxena, 56, suffered a stroke in March that has left him without the use of his legs or his left arm.
He rolled into the B.C. Court of Appeal hearing pushed by a nurse and accompanied by his mother, who came to Canada to help look after him.
Saxena is representing himself in an application to have the appeal court review an earlier decision to uphold the order committing him for extradition.
With his mother handing him documents, Saxena told the three-judge panel that allowing him to be surrendered to Thai authorities for trial would be a "miscarriage of justice."
He claims the evidence used to grant the initial extradition order more than a decade ago is not the material Thai prosecutors will use against him if he eventually goes to trial.
"I will be tried on evidence which the extradition judge has not seen," Saxena argued.
Deborah Strachan, a federal Justice Department lawyer acting for the Thai government, said outside court she'll argue the judicial review is outside the court's jurisdiction.
But even if it was not, she said Saxena has no compelling reason to demand a review.
She noted Thailand's statute of limitations on the charges runs out July 2010.
"There is only one year left," she said.
Saxena faces charges under Thailand's Securities Exchange Act. He's accused of embezzling US$88-million from the Bangkok Bank of Commerce, which along with alleged theft committed by others helped trigger the bank's collapse.
He fled to Canada but Thai police obtained an extradition warrant and the RCMP arrested him in the resort town of Whistler, B.C., in July 1996.
Saxena has been fighting removal ever since.
He's currently under house arrest although he was held in custody for a time after being caught trying obtain a false passport.
In an Appeal Court ruling last January, Justice Edward Chaisson affirmed his release under strict conditions in a ruling that also expressed frustration over the drawn-out extradition process.
"This is most regrettable. While Mr. Saxena is entitled to exercise his right to resist his extradition, Canada is obliged to meet its international obligations," the judge wrote in his January ruling.
Chaisson noted Saxena had been charged both under the Securities Exchange Act and Thailand's penal code. But the latter charges expired four years ago under the Thai statute of limitations.
