As noted in several earlier posts, the Enron Task Force’s prosecution of three former National Westminster Bank PLC bankers has raised a political firestorm in the United Kingdom.
The Task Force is attempting to use the 2003 Extradition Treaty signed with the US in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. as the basis of extraditing the three former bankers to Houston to stand trial for allegedly bilking their former employer of $7.3 million in one of the schemes allegedly engineered by former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow and his right hand man, Michael Kopper.
According to this article from the Independent, the House of Lords refused on Wednesday to hear the NatWest Three’s challenge to the UK’s extradition treaty with the US, leaving the former bankers with only six days in which to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in an attempt to avoid extradition to Houston.
If extradited to Houston, the NatWest Three could face incarceration in the Federal Detention Center pending a trial in an unfriendly environment that could send each of them to prison for over 20 years.
As noted in the prior posts, the NatWest Three are contending that the treaty that is the basis for the proposed extradition is unfairly slanted because the U.S. has not yet ratified the treaty while it is already being implemented in the U.K. Under the treaty, the U.S. government is no longer required to present a prima facie case against the former bankers and the Department of Justice may continue to challenge the evidence put forward in extradition requests while U.K. citizens who are subject to U.S. extradition requests have have no such parallel right.
Moreover, the NatWest Three point out that U.K. authorities have already investigated the matter and declined to pursue charges against the former bankers, and that the U.S. culture regarding Enron almost assures a conviction while, at worst, the three would be be facing either fines and light prison sentences if the case were prosecuted in the U.K.
However, the most damaging aspect of the NatWest Three case is the portrayal of the U.S. justice system in the U.K. and internationally as a wild frontier with no respect for due process of law. That portrayal is a natural byproduct of the criminalization of business mindset that elevates propaganda campaigns and prosecutorial misconduct over proof of criminal charges in a court of law.
Little wonder that the already high price of asserting innocence of business crimes in the U.S. justice system continues to rise.