Peter Roope v District Court for Prague 1, Czech Republic
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Sir Brian Keith |
| Judgment Date | 13 August 2014 |
| Neutral Citation | [2014] EWHC 2801 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 13 August 2014 |
| Docket Number | Case No: CO/2079/2014 |
[2014] EWHC 2801 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Sir Brian Keith
(sitting as a Judge of the High Court)
Case No: CO/2079/2014
Mr Ben Brandon (instructed by Hodge Jones & Allen) for the Appellant
Ms Hannah Hinton (instructed by the Crown Prosecution Service) for the Respondent
Hearing date: 25 July 2014
Introduction
On 4 December 2012, the Appellant, Peter Roope, was arrested pursuant to a European Arrest Warrant ("the warrant") issued by Judge Cihlarova in the District Court for Prague 1 on 13 March 2012. The warrant had been certified by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (as the National Crime Agency was then called) on 21 November 2012. The warrant was what is colloquially called an accusation warrant. It sought Mr Roope's extradition to the Czech Republic so that he could be tried for what in our law would be an offence of fraud. He and a co-defendant were alleged to have persuaded people who wanted to buy properties in Eastern Europe to invest considerable sums with them. The case against Mr Roope is that he used an assumed name, and never intended to purchase the properties, despite fraudulently representing that that was what he would be doing. The sums which he and his co-defendant are alleged to have defrauded the investors of amount to about £1.6m. A total of 50 complaints were particularised in the warrant.
The extradition hearing took place at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on 7 April 2014. District Judge Zani reserved judgment, and on 30 April 2014 he ordered Mr Roope's extradition to the Czech Republic. Mr Roope now appeals against that order. His sole ground of appeal is that his extradition to the Czech Republic would be an abuse of the extradition process. The facts are not entirely straightforward, and I trust that I will be forgiven for setting them out in some detail, but it is important to remember that the Czech Republic has been designated a category 1 territory pursuant to section 1 of the Extradition Act 2003 ("the Act"). Accordingly, Mr Roope's extradition is governed by Part I of the Act.
The facts
The criminal proceedings in the UK . This was not the first fraudulent investment scheme which Mr Roope was alleged to have been involved in. In 2008 he was living in Prague when he was extradited to the UK to face charges relating to a fraudulent investment scheme in this country. A restraint order was made against his realisable assets, and it was registered in the Czech Republic to cover his assets there. Mr Roope was to plead guilty at Worcester Crown Court to a charge of conspiracy to defraud, and on 21 December 2009 he was sentenced to 56 months imprisonment. In view of the time he had spent on remand in custody, he was released from prison on licence on 11 October 2010. His licence expired on 9 February 2013, and during the period of his licence he was under the supervision of a probation officer. The terms of his licence included conditions requiring him to reside at an address approved by his supervising officer, not to travel outside the UK without permission, and to leave his passport and any other international travel documents with the police.
On 20 October 2010, a confiscation order was made against Mr Roope by Worcester Crown Court in the sum of £844,637.02. He had to pay that sum within 6 months, with 54 months imprisonment in default of payment. The confiscation order had been made on the basis of two properties in the Czech Republic which he owned, and they represented the majority of his realisable assets. They had been included in the restraint order, and in due course the registration of the restraint order in the Czech Republic was vacated to enable those properties to be sold in order to satisfy the confiscation order. By September 2012, there was still a large amount outstanding on the confiscation order, and on 20 September 2012 the Serious Fraud Office applied to the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court for a warrant for the committal of Mr Roope for non-payment. However, by 2 November 2012 Mr Roope had paid the amount outstanding on the confiscation order together with interest.
The attempts by the Czech authorities to locate Mr Roope . In the meantime, the police in the Czech Republic had begun to investigate Mr Roope's involvement in the offences for which his extradition to the Czech Republic was subsequently sought. On 8 April 2011, the police decided to initiate criminal proceedings against him. It was known that he had been sentenced to a term of imprisonment in the UK, and the police asked the Home Office for his whereabouts so that the decision of 8 April 2011 could be served on him. On 1 December 2011, the Home Office informed them that Mr Roope had been released from prison, and that they were "trying to locate" him. That was a little surprising, because all that was needed was for an enquiry to be made by the Home Office of the Ministry of Justice, and Mr Roope's address which had been approved by his supervising officer would have been apparent. However, when the Home Office's letter was translated into Czech, the word "locate" was translated as if it meant "search for", and it may have been that which led the police to believe that Mr Roope did not want his whereabouts to be known and that he had become a fugitive from justice.
Accordingly, the Czech police asked for a lawyer to be appointed to act for Mr Roope in his absence, and it was decided to commence criminal proceedings against him in the Czech Republic under the provisions of Czech law which allowed for someone to be prosecuted in their absence when they were regarded as a fugitive from justice. At no time did the Home Office inform the Czech authorities that Mr Roope's whereabouts were known after all, though it is important to add that at no time did the Czech authorities get in touch with the Home Office following the letter of 1 December 2011 to find out if Mr Roope had been found.
It is not entirely clear what the Czech police thought Mr Roope was a fugitive from justice from – a fugitive from justice in the UK (for example, because of the sums outstanding on the confiscation order) or a fugitive from justice in the Czech Republic (perhaps because he had heard that he was wanted there in connection with the offences for which his extradition was subsequently sought). Having said that, though, the warrant itself suggests the latter, since it referred to him as having "escaped", which in the circumstances must have meant having gone to ground on his release from prison, and being "in hiding in order to avoid criminal prosecution or the threat of punishment", which is more likely to refer to his prosecution and punishment for offences in the Czech Republic). In the circumstances, I proceed on the basis most favourable to Mr Roope, namely that the police and Judge Cihlarova both thought that Mr Roope was a fugitive from justice in the Czech Republic. Mr Roope's Czech lawyers — not the lawyer appointed by the State — say that the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office knew (even if the police and Judge Cihlarova did not) that Mr Roope was not a fugitive from justice because through his Czech girlfriend he had been liaising with the Czech authorities over the release of his properties in the Czech Republic in order to meet his obligations under the confiscation order. But that does not mean that he could not have been a fugitive from justice at the same time.
The criminal proceedings in the Czech Republic . That was the background against which the warrant was issued on 13 March 2012. With the police believing that Mr Roope was a fugitive from justice, the criminal proceedings against Mr Roope continued in his absence. Only 24 of the 50 complaints were pursued initially, and Mr Roope's Czech lawyers think that that may have been because the attendance of the complainants relating to those 24 complaints could be secured at Mr Roope's trial without any difficulty. In the event, his trial took place in his absence in the Municipal Court in Prague on 11 December 2012, with the court-appointed lawyer representing him. Mr Roope was convicted in respect of 21 of the 24 complaints, and he was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment. Ironically, Mr Roope had been arrested in the UK under the warrant 7 days earlier, but the Municipal Court did not know that. Indeed, it was not until 4 March 2013 that the Czech courts were informed that Mr Roope had been arrested under the warrant. Mr Roope himself claims that he did not know that he was being investigated by the authorities in the Czech Republic, or that the police wanted to interview him. Whether that is true or not is not something which appears to have been investigated or adjudicated upon, but it is not disputed that he had not been served with notice, or otherwise formally notified, of the proceedings.
The subsequent errors made in Mr Roope's case . On 21 December 2012, Mr Roope's Czech lawyers filed a motion in the Czech courts seeking the revocation of the warrant, and on 5 February 2013, Mr Roope's court-appointed lawyer lodged an appeal on the basis that there had been insufficient evidence to justify his conviction. By then, the proceedings to extradite him to the Czech Republic had been commenced. In the course of those proceedings, it must have been asserted on Mr Roope's behalf that although the warrant was an accusation warrant, he had in fact been...
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