Extradition Bill to net tax cheats

Fugitive tax fraudsters could be brought back to Britain to face trial under changes to the extradition laws announced yesterday by the Government.

Fraudsters wanted by the Inland Revenue have for years exploited loopholes in the law in Italy, France, Greece and Luxembourg, which prevents the extradition of suspects of fiscal offences.

But the Home Office minister Bob Ainsworth said such countries would now send wanted offenders for trial in Britain after a streamlining of the extradition laws across the European Union.

Announcing a new extradition Bill, Mr Ainsworth said changes would speed up the process of extraditing criminal suspects both from and to Britain. At present it can take up to six years for people to be extradited from Britain to face trial abroad and it takes an average of one year for suspects to be brought to Britain to face justice.

Mr Ainsworth claimed that differences in legislation had also led to a British paedophile suspect evading the law by exploiting a time limit on extradition which previously existed in Denmark. Danish authorities refused to send the alleged paedophile for trial because his accuser had waited until she was an adult to go to police and a 10-year extradition time bar had elapsed.

Mr Ainsworth said the new arrangements would also mean that Austria would no longer refuse to extradite any of its nationals for trials abroad.

The changes in the extradition Bill, which include the introduction of a European arrest warrant, has been attacked by some civil liberties groups which believe miscarriages of justice will occur because suspects are not given fair trials in some countries.

Mr Ainsworth said British people must abide by the laws of foreign countries and expect to go before the courts of other EU states if they committed offences there. He denied the suggestion that foreign police officers will be able to come to Britain and use the new warrants to arrest British nationals. He said the warrants would only be used by British police and other officials such as Customs and Excise officers.

He said Britons who committed acts which were legal in this country but against the law in other EU states would not be at risk of extradition.

For instance, a Holocaust denier who wrote an article in Britain – where expressing such an opinion is not illegal – would not face prosecution by German authorities, even if the work was subsequently published in Germany, which outlaws such views.