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January 17, 2006 U.S. expert says USA will not take over Czech file on Kozeny LONDON- U.S. defense lawyer and legal expert Douglas McNabb said that it is almost ruled out that a U.S. court would deal with the crimes Czech-born businessman Viktor Kozeny has been charged with in the Czech Republic as the Czech Justice Ministry hopes. The Czech Republic seeks Kozeny's extradition over the embezzlement of assets worth 11.5 billion crowns. McNabb also told CTK that he considers it little probable that the United States would extradite Kozeny to the Czech Republic before he serves a possible sentence in the USA. It is not even clear whether Kozeny, a resident of the Bahamas who has Irish citizenship now, will be extradited to the United States. The decision is to be made in the Bahamas, where he has been in custody, in a hearing that is to start on January 30. The proceedings will be of key importance for the further development of the case. The United States applied for Kozeny's extradition last October. The Bahamian police arrested Kozeny on October 5 at the request of the United States. Though the Czech Republic, unlike the United States, does not have a treaty on legal assistance, the Bahamian government has confirmed that it has a binding treaty on extradition of criminals that then Czechoslovakia and Britain signed in the 1920s when the Bahamas were a British colony, and the Czech Republic a part of Czechoslovakia. Some estimate that the United States' radical procedure and its influence gives it a greater chance of having Kozeny extradited. McNabb said many countries want to comply with U.S. requests and the United States considers corruption a high-priority issue. A spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in the Bahamas said in October that Washington considers bribery of public officials to be a global threat that interferes with free competition. McNabb said that the United States is very offensive in dealing with international level corruption and that laws give it powers to prosecute even cases that seemingly do not concern the United States. Kozeny is prosecuted in the United States for having allegedly bribed foreign officials outside U.S. territory. The United States has charged Kozeny with having bribed Azerbaijani state officials with the aim of gaining advantages in privatisation in Azerbaijan that is punishable under U.S. laws, but not under Bahamian. McNabb said that the Kozeny case is far from being isolated and that proceedings have been launched against several Britons whose extradition has been applied for by the Untied States where they have been charged with corruption and fraud. Kozeny has hired an elite British expert in extradition, Clive Nicholls, who has refused to talk to journalists to date. McNabb said he will base his defense on that the United States wants Kozeny to be extradited for acts that are not punishable in the Bahamas. Nicholls's other argument will be, McNabb estimates, the fact that the Czech Republic had applied for Kozeny's extradition earlier than the United States and that he should therefore be extradited to the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic however lodged the application two years ago already and prosecutes Kozeny as a fugitive. The Czech Justice Ministry spokesman has said that if the U.S. is more successful than the Czech Republic, the Czechs can ask for Kozeny's extradition, permission to hear him or to hand the whole criminal file to the U.S. offices, while he considers the third variant to be the most probable. McNabb said however that he is convinced that the U.S. court will not deal with the crime Kozeny committed in the Czech Republic against Czech citizens. It is just as little probable that the USA would extradite Kozeny to the Czech Republic after it has exerted such effort to have him extradited from the Bahamas. McNabb said that even if the Bahamas rejected both the U.S. and Czech extradition applications, Kozeny will not win. He will remain a Bahamian "prisoner" because the United States will see to it that he be arrested anywhere outside the Bahamas. Besides, both the United States and the Czech Republic can repeatedly apply for his extradition, so the rejection of one practically solves nothing for Kozeny, McNabb said. This article can also be found in the Prague Daily Monitor, Czech Republic, and Czech Happenings. | |