When a common criminal is caught, he goes to prison. Nobody cares. The newspaper stories about the thief or murderer usually end when the prison sentence is handed down by the judge. When a political prisoner is in detention, many people care. The story goes on and on in the media. Often, after some time, the authorities regret having detained this political inmate because it keeps creating negative energy towards the authorities. The question then is how to stop the buzz. Basically, the two options are either a vigorous stop or an elegant fade-out. After defining “political prisoner” and describing three real-life examples with a Dutch connection, I will analyze some practical and proven solutions for a graceful fade-out. There is no universal definition of a political prisoner. National criminal codes usually do not carry a section on “political imprisonment” because almost all nations deny that their own country detains political prisoners. Especially Western nations, however, are good at pointing the accusatory finger at other countries. Originally, a definition of “political prisoner” was developed for this purpose by the European Parliament in 2012. This definition can be helpful in analyzing whether political prisoners only exist in Russia, China or North Korea. The definition opens the door to five different grounds for political imprisonment. The first four grounds reflect extreme cases, not likely to happen within the EU or other Western countries. Any political prisoners in such countries would probably be convicted under standard criminal-law regulations. The final ground is therefore the most interesting to use in cases in Western nations. This ground applies to a person deprived of personal...

By Nathan Smith.   Judge in Meng Wanzhou case focuses on fraud allegations and ignores the sanctions-busting. Says Canada’s laws do not recognise sanctions-busting as a crime While some rules are created to regulate the global system, it is an illusion to call these things “laws” The Meng case highlights that international law is largely a fiction, no matter how much people want to believe in it   Sometimes a judge makes a comment that highlights a weird assumption most people would prefer not to consider. Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes, the judge in control of the ongoing extradition case against Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, has been quick during this trial to point out irregularities in the prosecution’s case. Meng is accused of misrepresenting Huawei’s control over Skycom, a company that sold computer equipment in Iran, during a 2013 presentation that allegedly put HSBC at risk of violating US sanctions against Iran. The US team wants to try Meng in New York for her part in the act. But before they can do that Holmes must find her guilty of committing a crime that is on the books in Canada. After all, sanctions-busting is not a crime in Canada. So, Holmes is keeping the extradition trial within the “four corners” of fraud law since that is a crime in Canada. “Isn’t it unusual that one would see a fraud case with no actual harm many years later and one in which the alleged victim, a large institution, appears to have numerous people within the institution who had all the facts that are now said to have been...

The aftermath of the arrest – during a transit stop in Vancouver on December 1, 2018 – of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer (CFO) of Huawei, the noted giant Chinese global company, made the world’s top headlines. The Canadian authorities acted on a warrant issued by a New York court seeking her extradition to the United States, to face charges of abetting her company’s trading with Iran. [1] Her continued detention, even after negotiating an $8 million parole, pending her extradition hearings scheduled as far off as January 20, 2020, or 13 months later (in reality, even going farther beyond), raised a wide range of questions. Many were of a serious legal nature, but apparently prompted by serious political motives. Due Process and Certain Petty Maneuvers The fussy questions regarding due process included: Why was she treated like a criminal without a trial and was locked up while being initially denied parole by a Vancouver prosecutor who refused to accept a bail by her husband because he was not a Canadian citizen?! Even after she was finally paroled, she continued, for some time, to be kept under house arrest in Vancouver wearing leg fetters, as if she had already been convicted a criminal. Later on, although given the freedom to move around, she remained under 7/24 surveillance, enforced in part by a GPS tractor anchored on her left ankle. Meng was to be extradited to the U.S. for trials for her role in abetting her company’s trading with Iran, which was a breach of U.S. policy and law banning trade with Iran. But, this ban was unilateral U.S. policy...

Nathan Smith. US/China tensions aside, executives at HSBC must be counting their lucky stars. The latest drama in the extradition case against Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou began in June when a judge in Hong Kong, forced HSBC to release a trove of internal documents to bolster Meng’s claim that the bank knew about Huawei’s links with Iranian subsidiary Skycom. But the documents didn’t create the effect which Meng’s legal team may have wanted. The Canadian judge presiding over Meng’s extradition case to the US chose to keep the documents under seal which means they cannot be used in the case. Extradition can be a drawn-out process at the best of times, and Meng’s case been sluggish for more than two and a half years. Outside of some legal sector media outlets, the case has largely dropped off the international radar. So, some quick context of her case is in order. A history of trust On December 1, 2018, Canadian officials, acting at the request of the US Justice Department, arrested Meng Wanzhou at the Vancouver International Airport. Meng’s arrest was made pursuant to an indictment which charged Huawei, its US subsidiary Skycom Tech and Meng with various counts of bank fraud, wire fraud, violation of US sanctions against Iran, related conspiracy charges and a healthy topping of obstruction of justice for good measure. The US alleges Meng committed bank fraud in the US when she misled an HSBC executive at a 2013 meeting in Hong Kong in which she showed a PowerPoint presentation that described Skycom as “controllable” by Huawei in an effort to cover up prohibited...

Banks have an obligation to act as gatekeepers to the European financial world. The obligations are codified in EU legislation as well as in laws and regulations in the respective Member States. Heavy fines of hundreds of millions of euros have been issued to non-compliant Financial Institutions (FI). Not only banks, but also individual responsible bank employees can be criminally investigated in case of non-compliance. Where Know Your Client (KYC) information has been insufficiently gathered, or incorrectly reported to the proper authorities, high-level banking officials can choose the tactical defense of not having been informed by lower-level employees, thus deflecting a personal knowledge of the bank’s shortcoming. Aside from the EU Directives and national legislation, global banks such as Goldman Sachs and HSBC pride themselves on “going the extra mile” combating money laundering and terrorist financing by agreeing on KYC principles, training staff of individual banks and promoting research (www.wolfsberg-principles.com). The principles agreed to by the global banks have no legal status but claiming to act against them would obviously put a participating bank in an awkward position. Thirdly, many countries have implemented “long-arm justice” legislation to combat money laundering or terrorist financing. Recently, China has seen the introduction of such laws. By all means, the champion of long-arm justice is the USA, which has made the mere use of its currency sufficient basis for American jurisdiction, thus covering any transaction in US dollars in any country in the world. The basis of the EU regulations is that FIs not merely go through the motions of KYC by creating paperwork but that an ongoing assessment is made of the...

US Extra-territorial Jurisdiction Hinges on the Dominance of the US Dollar, So US Global Leverage Will Persist Until the US Dollar Is De-throned The power to print a nation’s currency is one of the greatest powers of any government, but the power to print to the dominant global currency is perhaps the greatest power any government can possess. [1] This immense power is currently in the hands of the US, and it has weaponized the dominance of the US dollar to enforce key elements of its geopolitical policy preferences on the rest of the world. The aggressive use by the US of unilateral secondary sanctions has spurred the adoption of a range of counter-measures by US friends and foes alike in an attempt to blunt the extra-territorial impact of these secondary sanctions. To be effective, however, such counter-measures must be able to shield non-US companies from the severe penalties that the US may impose for non-compliance. As we have seen [2], blocking statutes alone have generally proven to be paper tigers, more political posturing than an effective defense. China may be in a better position to use counter-measures in a more holistic manner to push back against US perceived overuse of sanctions, but this will require a high degree of tactical finesse in order not to have a chilling effect on foreign investment or give rise to other unintended consequences. More fundamentally, unless the dominance of the US dollar in international transactions is eroded, the US will be able maintain its current stranglehold on the global financial system, rendering all counter-measures ineffective. All currencies eventually die or devalue, but the...