The High Court has ruled that no legal objection prevents the surrender of an anonymised man to France under a European Arrest Warrant seeking to enforce a three-year prison sentence. The judgment says the court may make a surrender order; it does not say that surrender has taken place.
In a judgment delivered on 8 February 2016, Ms Justice Donnelly considered a warrant issued in June 2014 after a French court convicted the man in his absence. The offences concerned complicity in the possession and transport of untaxed cigarettes, attempted export, and participation in a conspiracy. The warrant sought his surrender to serve the sentence, while recording that he would have a right to a retrial or appeal after surrender.
The French case concerned a lorry stopped in France on 5 March 2010 carrying five tonnes of smuggled cigarettes. The High Court said the French judgment found that the respondent knowingly helped prepare the offences and gave instructions connected with them. It held that the alleged conduct corresponded to Irish offences involving excise-duty evasion, including under section 119 of the Finance Act 2001. The judge said the High Court’s role was not to reassess the evidence behind the French convictions.
The respondent argued that the warrant did not adequately describe his alleged involvement, that the offences were committed outside France, and that surrender would be an abuse of process. He also relied on family-life concerns and disputed whether the French sentence was enforceable because the judgment had not been personally served on him.
The court rejected those objections. It found the warrant and further material gave sufficient details about the offences, the time period and the respondent’s involvement. It concluded that the substantive cigarette offences took place in France, while the respondent’s acts of complicity were carried out in Ireland. It also found no abuse of process: the earlier prosecution warrant had been withdrawn, and the judge found no evidence of bad faith or circumstances requiring refusal of surrender.
On the family-life objection, the judge accepted that surrender would affect the respondent and his family, including three young children, but found no exceptional harm sufficient to outweigh the public interest in surrender. On enforceability, the court held that the French authorities had identified an enforceable judgment and arrest warrants whose effect had been maintained; the respondent’s lawyer’s report did not establish otherwise.
The court concluded that surrender was not prohibited under the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 or on abuse-of-process grounds, and said it could make an order for surrender to a person authorised by France to receive him.