The High Court has refused Frank Agrama’s application for judicial review of two Italian requests for assistance in obtaining evidence in an investigation concerning alleged offences linked to broadcasting rights. The court found that the first request was properly received and that the Minister was not required to investigate Agrama’s complaints about the second before nominating a District Court judge.
Mr Justice Michael Peart delivered judgment on 25 January 2013. Agrama challenged requests sent by an Italian prosecutor in Milan in 2006 and 2008. The first concerned an investigation into alleged fraud and money laundering linked to the purchase of broadcasting rights in 1999 and 2000. The second, described as substituting for the first, concerned similar alleged offences in later years, from 1999 to 2005.
A District Court judge received material from National Irish Bank under the first request in February 2007, and it was transmitted to the Italian prosecutor. Agrama later argued that the request had not been properly transmitted because it came from the prosecutor rather than Italy’s Ministry of Justice. He sought an order directing the Minister to take steps to retrieve the material.
The court rejected that argument. It held that section 51 of the Criminal Justice Act 1994 allowed the Minister to receive a request from a prosecuting authority. The nomination of the judge and transmission of the bank material were in accordance with domestic law. The court therefore declined to order the material’s return, without deciding whether it had power to make such an order.
Agrama also argued that the second request repeated inaccuracies and misrepresentations he had raised in a 2007 letter to the Minister. He said the Minister should have addressed those complaints, sought a response from the Italian prosecutor and refrained from nominating a judge until the concerns were resolved. The Minister’s position was that section 51 required him to consider whether an offence was suspected and whether proceedings or an investigation existed, not to determine the truth of the allegations.
Peart J held that the Minister had to consider the request and satisfy himself that section 51’s requirements were met, but was not required to conduct a detailed examination of disputed facts or assess the merits of a possible prosecution. The Minister could consider representations, but was not obliged to do so, seek them, or wait for a response before acting. The judge also found that the lack of a response to Agrama’s complaints did not make the second request an abuse of process.
The court refused the reliefs sought. The judgment did not determine the truth of the allegations in the Italian requests; it addressed the legality of the evidence-assistance process in Ireland.