Overview:
With all these emerging technologies and globalization, when it is not so hard to travel from one place to another, several aspects of our society have modified, including the nature of crimes and their investigations. Whether it is a case of Pablo Escobar, the most notorious drug smuggler of the world, or Osama bin laden, nations have struggled in investigating the crime and prosecuting the culprits when the guilty has moved to another country. (Caroline Morgan, 2010)
To fulfill the right and provide the opportunity to authentically investigate the case and punish the culprit in order to provide justice and promote peace and harmony in the world should be the priority and goal of every respectful society. The crime is crime, no matter where is it committed and the societies should fight it together and punish the guilty. (KIMBERLY PROST, n.d.)
One of the key challenges for the law enforcing agencies is the sovereignty of countries, which sometimes come under the way of successful investigation and extradition. Countries may have reputational issue in providing access of their own nationals to some foreign government or organizations. The case even get worse when the relationship between the countries are not so well. The people or organization who commit transnational crimes are very aware of such techniques and they try to exploit the differences between legal systems, the fight of bureaucracies, the protection of sovereignty, and the complete inability of countries to work together to overcome their differences.(Greece-OECD Project: Technical Support on Anti-Corruption , n.d.)
In order to legally fight such people and organization who are involve in transnational crimes, the countries and governments invented tools like extradition and mutual assistance so that such entities would not be able to exploit differences between the legal systems, protection of sovereignty and simply the clash between bureaucracies. Mutual assistance and extradition, both, are tools which help creating bridges between two counties in order to mutually cooperate in providing free and fair trial and investigation so that the real culprit can be punished without having any barriers. (David Chaikin, 2006)
Extradition is the process where the country surrenders its national or expat to the other country where that person has committed any crime. Extradition is one of the older example of mutual cooperation among countries, starting from Egyptian, Chaldean,Chinese, and Assyro-Babylonian. As per record, the first extradition treaty happened in 1280BC. However, in older years or till 1800 century, extradition or mutual assistance between countries were solely used for the purpose of politics and religion, in recent years it has become more common and useful in competing with crimes and promoting peace in the society. (Sharon A. Williams, 1992)
The first challenge the prosecutor or the judge finds when they get to know that the person who is found guilty or is required for investigating is in some other nation, that whether they would be able to bring the culprit back to that country. As per the international law, no country neither legally nor morally is obliged to extradite anyone. In order to cater this situation, countries have started to sign treaty agreements among them so that they can extradite the culprits and fight such transnational crimes together. Today, there exist several extradition treating among countries and even regions. Few famous treaties are The European Convention on Extradition, Commonwealth Scheme, The Inter – American Conventions, The Benelux Extradition Convention, The Nordic States Scheme, and The Arab League Extradition Agreement. However, keeping in mind the increasing number of transnational crimes, money laundering and illegal offshore accounts, the number of treating should increase in order to effectively extradite the culprits. (Manley O. Hudson, n.d.)
How Mutual Assistance can help in Stolen Asset Recovery:
Several cases on flight of stolen assets can be found today. One, as mentioned in the handout of World Bank, The Puppet Masters, is of Kenya when its government invited bids to replace its passport system. Even though the government received bids as low as of £6 million, the contract was awarded to a firm named, Anglo-Leasing and Finance Ltd., a shell company registered in UK, for a amount of £31.89 million. This is a simple case of how through massive amounts of black money, corruption, and stolen assets are driven out of the country to a place known as safe havens.
The complexities usually involved in such cases can make it almost impossible to recover stolen assets. For the above mentioned case, till now not any individual or company been convicted of a corruption offense, despite the millions of dollars of illicit payments allegedly involved. So what methods, countries and legal bodies can utilized to ensure successfully recovery of the stolen assets?
With the common ways of criminal proceedings and confiscation, a handbook of World Bank, Public Wrongs Private Actions, suggest another way to deal such criminal offences which is linked to civil remedies. (Emile van der Does de Willebois, n.d.)
Whereas criminal laws present society’s disapproval of the wrong doings like corrupt acts and vows to stop, punishment, and confiscation of stolen assets, civil law aims on victims’ interests and focuses at restitution and compensation. Both of these methods may occur sometimes in parallel, or sequentially sometimes. Hence, a useful and effective answer to corruption and wrong doings would generally asks for concomitant utilization of both civil law remedies and criminal proceedings to achieve the desired outcome. (Jean-Pierre Brun, n.d.)
Dual Criminality:
In order to successfully extradite any person, the alleged crime must be illegal and punishable in both the countries, requesting and the requested. This principle is known as Dual criminality. Seemingly, this looks like a very simple task; however, in reality it is quiet complicated. There are several complexities in the legal systems of countries. The problem comes when there are difference in how two countries define a crime. A similar crime may have different implications, punishment and prosecution procedures in two different countries. What may be theft in one country, might be larceny in other. Murdering someone has very different punishments in USA and Saudi Arabia. (George J. Andreopoulos, n.d.)
Issues in Extradition, Mutual Assistance and Proving Dual Criminality:
Once the prosecutors are sure that they can extradite someone accused of a crime in their land, the next big challenge is to gather and provide enough and required proofs to the requesting country. Any country, even who has signed extradition treaty, won’t extradite any person without having significant amount of required proofs. This might seems quite simple, but historically many culprits have escaped extradition because of this as collecting proofs as per the requirement of requested country sometimes get very difficult. And this problem is not just because of the difference in legal systems but difference in proof requirements. However, on the positive side, this issue is getting better with time as now more countries are easing their list of proofs before allowing the extradition. (Philipp Girardet, 2010)
Another main issue which prosecutors find is that some countries have policies that stop them from extraditing local nationals to other countries. These countries instead of extraditing their nationals to other country, prosecute and investigate their alleged crimes locally in their own courts and as per local legal systems. Thus, many extradition treaties where it is mentioned that if extradition is not possible because of involvement of local citizens, the case would be prosecuted in local courts. These clauses are aimed to promote the cause that criminals won’t go free and will be trialed no matter what. However, there are several issues in it. As per the United Nations report on extradition, (Adán Nieto Martín, 2018)
“It was noted that the use of the principle autdedereautjudicare would in theory be an alternative to the extradition of nationals and had on some occasions proved effective. There were, however, several significant practical problems in its application, including the low priority assigned to such prosecutions by overburdened requested States. The difficulty and costs of obtaining evidence from the requesting State, and the serious burdens imposed by such trials on the victims, witnesses and other persons, were cited as examples. These problems significantly impeded the effectiveness of this alternative to extradition.”
Conclusion:
With changing time, the nature of crimes is evolving. The frequency of transnational crimes has been increasing as it is getting easier to travel and the borders are less hard to cross. But in order to cater this issue, the governments and organization have developed tools like extradition and mutual assistance which have been proved so fruitful in combating such crimes.
References:
Adán Nieto Martín, 2018. The Foundations of Mutual Recognition and the Meaning of Dual Criminality in:.
Caroline Morgan, 2010. The Potential Of Mutual Recognition As A Leading Policy Principle. The Future of Police and Judicial Cooperation in the EU.
David Chaikin, 2006. The Impact of Swiss Principles of Mutual Assistance on Financial and Fiscal Crimes. Revenue law journal.
Emile van der Does de Willebois, n.d. The Puppet Masters, s.l.: World Bank.
George J. Andreopoulos, n.d. Extradition law. Encyclopedia Britannica .
Greece-OECD Project: Technical Support on Anti-Corruption , n.d. Mutual Legal Assistance:Assessment and revision of the current legal and regulatory framework , s.l.: s.n.
Jean-Pierre Brun, n.d. Public Wrongs, Private Actions. Civil Lawsuits to Recover Stolen Assets, s.l.: World Bank.
KIMBERLY PROST, n.d. International cooperation in combating transnational crimes.. Mutual assistance in criminal matters and extradition .
Manley O. Hudson, n.d. The Factor Case and Double Criminality in Extradition. The American Journal of International Law, Volume 28.
Philipp Girardet, 2010. ‘What if Uncle Sam wants you?’: Principles and Recent Practice Concerning US Extradition Requests in Cartel Cases. Journal of European Competition Law & Practice,.
Sharon A. Williams, 1992. The Double Criminality Rule and Extradition: A Comparative Analysis. Osgoode Hall Law School of York University.
Crime Theories
Cybercrime