Oprynski v Regional Court in Lublin Poland
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Bean |
| Judgment Date | 11 November 2013 |
| Neutral Citation | [2013] EWHC 3736 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 11 November 2013 |
| Docket Number | CO/10414/2013 |
[2013] EWHC 3736 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Bean
CO/10414/2013
Mr B Hawkin (instructed by Lawrence & Co) appeared on behalf of the Appellant
Miss H Hinton (instructed by Crown Prosecution Service) appeared on behalf of the Respondent
This is an appeal by Mr Oprynski against a decision of District Judge Evans dated 29 July 2013 ordering his extradition to Poland on a European Arrest Warrant dated 16 May 2006. The District Judge rejected the various points before him in a carefully reasoned and robust ruling. He was not to know that a further point would be raised on appeal.
I will deal first with the points which were before him and then with the new point. The first point taken in the skeleton argument on behalf of the appellant is that the District Judge was wrong to conclude that the appellant was a fugitive. The charge against the appellant, to put it at the highest level of generality, is one of causing the company of which he was an officer a loss of £50,000. The District Judge recites in paragraph 16 of his judgment that the appellant was called before the board of directors at a meeting at which, on his own evidence, his conduct was discussed. The conduct was making loans to friends and family, which he knew very well were unauthorised. The narrative of the District Judge of the appellant's evidence continues:
"He advanced the suggestion [to the board of directors] that perhaps a new loan of £50,000 could be made to him so that the full debt could be repaid and his friends and family would act as guarantors. Unsurprisingly, this suggestion was not taken up. Shortly after this meeting, in August 2002, he received a letter from the managing director summarily dismissing him. He was given no notice and was required to leave immediately. He has the letter now but he did not bring it to court and he has not provided his lawyers with a copy. He said the company was effectively prepared to write off the £50,000 loss because the company had insurance. [The District Judge commented that this sounded highly unlikely, and continued:]. Within 1 month, in September 2002, he borrowed some money from his mother and left Poland, travelling to England. The only reason for leaving Poland was to seek employment. He did not think police might want to question him. [The District Judge added this comment:] I find that impossible to accept. I am sure to the criminal standard that he fled Poland in an attempt to avoid arrest and/or a police investigation."
Finally in the recital of the evidence of the appellant the District Judge said:
"He thought the company might well contact him in an attempt to recover the money but they never did. He accepted he never gave the company any address in England at which he could be contacted."
The District Judge commented that the appellant's evidence that his reason for leaving Poland was to seek employment and that he did not think that the police might want to question him was an account of events which the judge found impossible to accept. That conclusion was open to him on the evidence and indeed is entirely obvious.
Mr Hawkin says that the comment that "it sounds highly unlikely" that the company would have been prepared to write off the £50,000 loss because it had insurance was an unfair one and not a sound basis for the District Judge's finding that the appellant fled Poland in an attempt to avoid arrest.
I disagree. The conclusion of the District Judge that the appellant was a knowing fugitive is obvious. The boilerplate excuse, if I can so describe it, that immediately after being detected in an offence of fraud an appellant leaves Poland to travel to England purely in order to seek employment, was one which the judge was entitled to reject. The appellant was plainly a fugitive.
That means the next point, that extradition in 2013 for offences committed more than 10 years ago on the strength of a European Arrest warrant dated more than 7 years ago would be oppressive because of the passage of time, must also fail. As Mr Hawkin realistically accepts, the leading authorities from Kakis v Government of Cyprus [1978] 1 WLR 779 onwards make it clear that a knowing fugitive cannot take advantage of passage of time as a bar to his extradition.
The third and final submission made to the District Judge and contained in the appellant's skeleton argument is that extradition would be a breach of Article 8. The appellant is now 62 years old and not in the best of health, although I agree with the District Judge that there is nothing wrong with him that is not the lot of many people of his age. His health is certainly not bad enough on its own to constitute a bar to extradition because of his Article 8 rights.
As to his family circumstances, sadly he became a widower on the death of his wife about 5 years ago. His family life is now with his son and daughter, who are both settled in this country, and the appellant lives with his son and his son's family. Extradition would, of course, interfere with this, as it always does, but the case comes nowhere near being one satisfying the test of...
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