The High Court was prepared to surrender Zbigniew Bednarczyk to Poland under three of four European arrest warrants, but ruled it could not surrender him under the remaining warrant because one of its two offences did not correspond to an offence in Irish law.
In a judgment delivered on 19 April 2012, Mr Justice Edwards considered four warrants issued by Polish judicial authorities. The court said it was satisfied that each warrant had been endorsed and executed, and that the person brought before it was the person named in them. It also found that none of the cases involved a trial in absentia requiring an undertaking.
The first warrant, issued on 15 June 2007, sought Bednarczyk’s prosecution over eight alleged fraudulent business transactions. The court found that the facts alleged could correspond to theft or making gain or causing loss by deception under Irish law. It also held that errors in the warrant’s numbering and wording could be overlooked because they caused no injustice.
The second warrant, issued on 27 November 2009, concerned a prosecution for fraud. The issuing authority had relied on the European arrest warrant category for fraud, and the court found the applicable minimum penalty threshold was met. It reached the same conclusion on the fourth warrant, issued on 16 December 2010, which also concerned a prosecution for fraud. A missing date in the English translation did not affect the court’s assessment because the original Polish document contained the full date.
The third warrant, issued on 30 July 2010, sought Bednarczyk’s return to serve an aggregate sentence of 18 months imposed in Poland for two offences. The court found correspondence with Irish offences for the first, involving alleged fraudulent acquisition of property. But the warrant gave insufficient information to show that Bednarczyk knew or believed a payment document was false, as required for the proposed Irish offence of using a false instrument. Because the sentence covered both offences together and could not be separated, the court said it could not surrender him under that warrant.
Bednarczyk had also objected that applying Poland’s 1997 Penal Code to alleged conduct from the 1990s could breach the principle against retrospective criminal punishment. He abandoned that objection after further information clarified that the earlier law would apply if it was less severe. The judge said the objection had been properly raised in light of the information available at the time, and praised the respondent and his legal team for their conduct.
The court concluded that it was disposed to order surrender under the first, second and fourth warrants under section 16(1) of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. It was unable to order surrender under the third warrant. The judgment states the court’s disposition; it does not record a separate final surrender order.