The High Court refused an application to surrender Tomasz Laks to Poland, where he was due to serve a 10-month prison sentence. Mr Justice Michael Peart ruled that the information in the European Arrest Warrant and later correspondence did not establish that the conduct underlying his conviction would amount to an offence under Irish law.
The warrant concerned a Polish conviction dated 29 June 2001. The sentence was suspended for three years on conditions that Mr Laks repay 2,189.32 Polish zloty, obtain employment and be supervised by a probation officer. A Polish court ordered the sentence to be enforced in June 2004 after finding that the conditions had not been met. Mr Laks left Poland in July 2004 and later came to Ireland.
The judge rejected Mr Laks’s argument that he had not “fled” Poland within the meaning of section 10(d) of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. He found that Mr Laks left knowing the conditions imposed with his suspended sentence and that his failure to comply could make the prison term enforceable. The judge also rejected the argument that the 2004 decision to lift the suspension breached fair-hearing rights: he treated it as enforcement of the sentence imposed after a trial at which Mr Laks had been present, rather than a fresh conviction or sentence.
The court also considered whether the Polish offence corresponded to an Irish offence of making a gain or causing a loss by deception under section 6 of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001. The Polish warrant described 13 cheques drawn on a savings account and said the conduct caused loss to the bank. Later information said Mr Laks had a credit limit of 1,500 zloty and had intentionally exceeded it, while arranging for wages to be paid to him rather than into the account.
The judge concluded that correspondence had not been established. Because the warrant did not mark the offence as one for which double criminality need not be checked, the court had to assess the acts described against Irish law. The permitted overdraft and the single offence covering all 13 cheques meant the judge could not be satisfied that each element of the Irish deception offence was made out. He said the information did not clearly establish that the cheques involved deception and dishonest intent to cause loss, and noted that it attributed the outcome in part to an imperfection in the banking system.
The judge therefore refused the surrender application. The ruling did not determine any new criminal charge in Ireland; it decided that the statutory basis required for surrender had not been established on the material before the court.