This Telegraph.com article updates the Enron-related case of the “NatWest Three,” the three former National Westminster Bank PLC bankers based in London who are charged in Houston with bilking their former employer of $7.3 million in a scheme allegedly engineered by former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow. Here are the previous posts on the NatWest Three.

Yesterday, the three bankers — David Bermingham, Giles Darby, and Gary Mulgrew — filed their appeal to England’s High Court of the decision last month of Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, who upheld an earlier decision by a judge at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court in central London to extradite the three bankers to Houston to face the charges.

The case has been undergoing increasing scrutiny in the English media because the U.S. is attempting to extradite the three men under the 2003 Extradition Act, which has been criticized in English legal circles for allowing British courts to extradite British citizens without proper evaluation of U.S. prosecutors’ charges and evidence.

Of particular interest is the article’s analysis of the three bankers’ procedural options in the foreign courts if they lose their current appeal:

If [the NatWest Three] lose, they will take the matter to the House of Lords and then, if necessary, on to the European Court of Human Rights. The process could take over five years.

Five years?!

The thought of the Enron Task Force remaining in business for another five years is definitely not comforting.