Patel & Ors v Public Prosecutor's Office of Nurnberg-Furth Germany
2014
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
UK
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE PITCHFORD
- MRS JUSTICE COX DBE
Areas of Law
- Extradition Law
- Human Rights Law
2014
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
UK
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
This case involves an appeal against the extradition of Mubarak Ismail Patel, Habibur Rahman Maroof, and Rizwan Desai to Germany under the European Arrest Warrant, which accused them of participating in a VAT fraud scheme. The appellants argued the EAW lacked sufficient details of the charges and that Patel's extradition violated his human rights. The court upheld the District Judge's decision, finding the EAW provided adequate particulars and extradition did not infringe Patel's Convention rights.
J U D G M E N T
LORD JUSTICE PITCHFORD: This is an appeal by Mubarak Ismail Patel, Habibur Rahman Maroof and Rizwan Desai against the decision of District Judge Goldspring, sitting at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 11 July 2014, to order their extradition to Germany under section 21(3) of the Extradition Act 2003 . We have been assisted by the submissions of Mr Hawkes on behalf of Patel, Mr Stansfeld on behalf of Maroof, and Mr Cooper on behalf of Desai.
The principal ground of appeal is common to each of the appellants. They contend that the European Arrest Warrant ("EAW" or "warrant") was defective in that it failed to provide the particulars required by section 2(4)(c) of the Act. Mr Patel also contends that extradition would be incompatible with his Convention rights within the meaning of section 21(2) of the Act.
The EAWs were issued by the Chief Prosecutor for Nurnberg-Furth on 12 July 2012. They were certified by the Serious Organised Crime Agency in the cases of Desai and Patel on 13 October 2012, and in the case of Maroof on 6 February 2013.
In order to constitute an arrest warrant for the purposes of Part 1 of the Extradition Act 2003 , by section 2(2) the warrant must contain the information required by section 2(4) . That information includes:
"(c) particulars of the circumstances in which the person is alleged to have committed the offence, including the conduct alleged to constitute the offence, the time and place at which he is alleged to have committed the offence and any provision of the law of the category 1 territory under which the conduct is alleged to constitute an offence."
In their description of the circumstances of the offences, the warrants were identical. In the English translation the particulars may be summarised as follows:
(1) The requested person is a member of a group which combined for the purpose of carrying out a "carousel" VAT fraud while trading or purporting to trade in electrical power. The object was to make fraudulent claims to input tax.
(2) The companies involved in the carousel in Germany were ASM Trading GmbH Capital Inc (headquarters in Berlin) ("ASM"), Energy Plus GmbH (headquarters in Nuremberg and Berlin) ("EP"), and ABM Online GmbH (headquarters in Munich) ("ABM").
(3) ASM was the "missing trader". ASM purported to issue invoices whose effect was to enable EP and ABM to make claims for input tax. The invoices were false because the underlying business was fictitious. There were purchases of el