The Court of Appeal dismissed Patrick Lee’s appeal against a High Court order in an extradition case, holding that a statutory rule treating certain offences as committed in Ireland for some purposes did not engage the relevant bar on extradition.
The Attorney General sought Lee’s extradition to the United States, where he had been charged in connection with an alleged mortgage fraud scheme. The judgment says the alleged offences took place entirely in the United States. They remained allegations; the appeal concerned the legal effect of Irish statutes, not whether Lee committed them.
Lee argued that the conduct alleged would amount to conspiracy offences under section 71 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006 if carried out abroad by an Irish citizen. Section 74(1) allows proceedings for such offences to be taken in any place in Ireland and says the offence may, for incidental purposes, be treated as having been committed there. Lee submitted that this meant the offences were regarded under Irish law as committed in Ireland, engaging section 15 of the Extradition Act 1965, which barred extradition in that circumstance.
In a judgment delivered on 20 April 2016, Mr Justice Gerard Hogan said section 74’s deeming rule was limited. He said it provided a venue for domestic prosecution of an extraterritorial offence and treated the offence as committed in Ireland for at least some incidental purposes. But the provision did not deem the offence to have been committed in Ireland for all purposes.
The court rejected the argument that the two deeming provisions should be applied in sequence: that the offence was deemed committed in Ireland under the 2006 Act and therefore fell within the 1965 Act’s extradition bar. Hogan J. said combining artificial assumptions from statutes enacted in different contexts could produce a result not intended or envisaged by the legislature. He concluded that section 15 applies only where an offence is regarded by Irish law, for all purposes, as having been committed in Ireland. It did not apply to offences that were in substance extraterritorial, even if deemed committed in Ireland for limited purposes such as venue.
Hogan J. agreed that the appeal should be dismissed and the High Court order affirmed. He noted that different considerations might apply to offences committed outside Ireland on Irish-registered vessels or aircraft; that issue did not arise in this case.