The High Court has ordered the surrender of a man to the Czech Republic to serve a five-year sentence for seven financial offences, rejecting his objections to the European Arrest Warrant.
In a judgment delivered on 8 October 2018, Ms Justice Donnelly found that surrender was not prohibited under the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. She ordered that the respondent be surrendered to a person authorised by the Czech Republic to receive him. The judgment does not specify when the order would be carried out.
The offences comprised five tax evasion offences and two loan fraud offences. The court said the sentence applied cumulatively to all seven. It rejected the argument that the warrant relied on a judgment that had been annulled, finding that the Czech documents identified the High Court in Olomouc’s 4 May 2004 judgment as the final decision on sentence. The court said there was no material uncertainty about the five-year sentence or the offences covered.
The respondent also argued that surrender was barred because he had not been represented by a lawyer with authority to act for him at the 2004 appeal hearing, which proceeded in his absence. The court considered the warrant’s account of his lawyer’s authority and substitution of counsel in open court, along with a letter from his Czech law firm. It rejected his account that counsel had authority only to seek an adjournment, and found the requirements of section 45 were met. The judge also noted that he had been served with the judgment and had an opportunity to appeal further, which he later waived.
The respondent argued that delay, family circumstances and his medical condition made surrender disproportionate, and that Czech prison conditions risked inhuman or degrading treatment. The court rejected the prison-conditions objection because no specific supporting evidence had been provided. It found the family and medical material did not establish exceptional circumstances that would make surrender oppressive or disproportionate.
The judge accepted that there was no explanation for the delay in sending the earlier warrant to Ireland, despite the issuing state knowing the respondent was abroad. But she held that delay, including the fresh warrant after an earlier surrender refusal, did not by itself amount to abuse of process or outweigh the public interest in surrender for the offences and sentence. The earlier warrant had been refused in 2016 because it lacked clarity about the number of offences.