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June 27, 2006 By JANE WARDELL AP Business Writer European Court of Human Rights won't halt extradition LONDON (AP) _ Three British bankers wanted on Enron-related fraud charges are to be extradited to the United States following the failure Tuesday of a last-ditch appeal to the European Court of Human Rights to halt their deportation. The court was the last avenue of appeal for the three former executives at Greenwich NatWest, a unit of Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, who have become a cause celebre in Britain because of the controversial legislation used to pursue their extradition. After a lengthy fight through each level of the British courts before the appeal to the European court, David Bermingham, Gary Mulgrew and Giles Darby _ known as the Bermingham Three _ will now leave Britain for Enron Corp.'s home state of Texas before July 17 to face seven counts of wire fraud each. The trio had appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to freeze a February ruling from the British High Court ahead of a fuller appeal. They have consistently argued that because most of the alleged offenses took place in Britain that any trial should be held here. They also argued that being forced to stand trial in Texas would be unjust and incompatible with European human rights law. However, the European court said in a letter to London law firm Jeffrey Green Russell on Tuesday that it saw no immediate cause to overturn the decision of the British courts. A court official wrote that it had been decided ''in the circumstances, not to indicate to the government of the United Kingdom ... the interim measure you are seeking.'' It added that the ''remaining issues, namely the merits of the application, will be examined in due course. However ... any such examination of the remaining legal issues will not stop the applicants' proposed removal.'' The trio were indicted by U.S. authorities under a treaty Britain signed with the United States in 2003 purportedly aimed at speeding up the process of bringing suspected terrorists to justice. Instead, the agreement has opened the door for the United States to pursue senior executives _ whose alleged offenses either took place mostly in Britain or were not even crimes here. Legal experts have cried foul on the 2003 treaty because it is not reciprocal. The United States has signed it, but the Senate has not yet ratified it while groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union lobby against it. That means British officials still must meet a higher burden of evidence when seeking extradition. ''We have now done everything possible to establish the rights of three U.K. citizens to be investigated and, if appropriate, prosecuted in the U.K., but all we have established is that U.K. citizens have no such rights against an extradition request made by the U.S.,'' said the trio's lawyer Mark Spragg. U.S. authorities will now determine the exact departure date of the three. Spragg said the legal team was already preparing to send witnesses and documents to Texas. Douglas McNabb, a Texas-based lawyer who testified as an expert witness on the U.S. legal system at the Bermingham hearing, said that the three would receive a bail hearing on arrival in the United States but added that they were likely to remain behind bars until a full trial _ which could be several months away. ''From the U.S. perspective they are fugitives ... they will be in the U.S. kicking and screaming so they would be flight risks,'' McNabb said. ''Once they are in a maximum security facility in Houston, the fact that the European Court of Human Rights is considering their application might not be of much use to them.'' McNabb added that he expected a host more such cases, given how quickly the Bermingham Three's appeals were dismissed by the British Courts. The trio, all British citizens, were charged in the United States in 2002 with bilking National Westminster Bank of $7.3 million and each face seven counts of wire fraud. They allegedly advised NatWest in 2000 to sell part of an Enron business it owned for less than the stake was worth, in a scheme allegedly devised with Andrew Fastow, former finance chief of the collapsed energy trader Enron Corp., and his colleague, managing director Michael Kopper. The three men then left NatWest, bought into the firm themselves and sold it off for a much higher fee, each pocketing about $2.6 million in the process, according to prosecutors. Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after revealing that it inflated its profits and filed false accounts to hide debts. This article can also be found in the Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, and the Kiplinger Forecasts. | |