The High Court ordered the surrender of Marius Karaliūnas to Lithuania to face prosecution on 22 of the 26 offences listed in a European arrest warrant. It refused surrender on four offences because they did not meet the minimum gravity requirements under Irish law.
In a judgment delivered on 3 March 2021, Mr Justice Paul Burns said the four excluded offences—numbers 10, 12, 13 and 19 in the warrant—carried a maximum penalty of 45 days’ arrest. The order under section 16(1) of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 applies to all the other offences.
The warrant, dated 15 July 2020, seeks prosecution over alleged offences relating to a furniture business carried on by Mr Karaliūnas. The court said offences 25 and 26 carried maximum penalties of four years’ imprisonment, while the remaining offences carried maximum penalties of three years.
Mr Karaliūnas objected that the offences did not correspond to offences under Irish law and that surrender would breach his rights to private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights. The judge dismissed both objections.
On correspondence, the judge found that offences 1 to 24 corresponded to deception under section 6 of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001. For offences 25 and 26, he found correspondence with offences relating to accounting records under section 286(2) of the Companies Act 2014, and with false accounting under section 10 of the 2001 Act. The judgment noted ambiguity in the English translation of part of the warrant but said correspondence could be established.
The respondent’s affidavits described the business’s conduct and failure, the breakdown of his marriage, his move to Ireland, a new relationship and efforts to repay debts. He said a Lithuanian lawyer expected a fine or suspended sentence in the worst case and that he was willing to take part remotely. At the hearing, his counsel accepted that Lithuanian authorities had rejected a request for remote participation.
The judge concluded that the delay since the alleged offences and the respondent’s family circumstances were not truly exceptional. He said issues concerning delay or a fair trial could be raised in the Lithuanian proceedings. The judgment states that surrender is sought for trial and that no cogent evidence displaced the statutory presumption that the issuing state would respect fundamental rights.
The judgment records the order for surrender; it does not state that surrender had already taken place.