DTI abandons extradition of Levitt from US

Plans to extradite financier Roger Levitt (right)from the United States have been abandoned.

The Department of Trade and Industry is to withdraw its request that the fugitive insurance salesman be returned to Britain, where he is charged with misleading DTI inspectors over his links with a London boxing promotion company, International Boxing Corporation. But trade and industry minister Nigel Griffiths said in a Commons written reply last night that warrants for Mr Levitt's arrest in Britain still remain.

The decision came after Mr Levitt, now president and chief executive of the New York-based Boxing International LLC, appealed against the application. At the High Court hearing in London last month, the DTI admitted that the New York judge who would consider the application had been wrongly advised since the crime was not extraditable and the basis on which Mr Levitt was arrested was invalid.

His QC, Alan Jones, argued that, since the American judge had been misled, it must follow that the extradition proceedings in the US must fail.

Mr Levitt was freed on bail of $1m (pounds 606,000).