Text 9199, 77 rader
Skriven 2010-07-11 17:20:14 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
   Kommentar till text 9151 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: LEO the lion
====================
Replying to a message of Robert Bashe to Roy Witt:

 RB> Roy Witt wrote to Michiel van der Vlist on Friday July 09 2010 at
 RB> 11:14:

 RW>> "French Court Hands Noriega A 7-Year Prison Term

 RB> You sure are hooked on this, Roy. Is Noriega your uncle or something?

 RW>> Wednesday's sentence in France, where Noriega was extradited 10 weeks
 RW>> ago, came on top of his two decades in a US prison. The court said
 RW>> there was enough evidence to establish that the equivalent millions
 RW>> of euros that flowed through Noriega's French bank accounts in the
 RW>> late 1980s were kickbacks from drug traffickers."

 RW>> So much for personal banking information kept from the government in
 RW>> Europe and so much for the non-extradition idea purported here.

 RB> Since when can a bank (in the USA or elsewhere) refuse a court order,
 RB> in connection with a criminal case, to provide information on banking
 RB> transactions?

If the bank is not within the jurisdiction of the court they can tell the court
to get bent.  It'll p*ss off the judge, but he has no authority outside of his
court's
jurisdiction.

 RB> And since when did Michiel (or anyone else) claim that
 RB> personal banking information was not available to governments in
 RB> Europe? In most EU countries, there is no more banking secrecy than
 RB> in the USA, i.e. none. Only a few, such as Austria, Belgium and
 RB> Luxembourg still have banking secrecy laws with teeth (generally
 RB> written into the constitution), and even those will provide
 RB> _specific_ information if asked by another EU government in a
 RB> _specific_ case ("Does soandso have a bank account in your
 RB> country?"and "Please provide the names and addresses of all of our
 RB> nationals having a bank account in your country" are NOT acceptable
 RB> or answerable questions).

 RB> As for extradition, you seem to have a number of things confused here.
 RB> People are extradited for crimes committed in a foreign country when
 RB> the act is also a crime in the extraditing country _and_ there is an
 RB> extradition treaty between the two countries. In addition, no country
 RB> without a death penalty will extradite a suspect to a country where
 RB> the death penalty threatens unless specific, legally binding
 RB> assurances are made in advance that the death penalty will NOT be
 RB> sought.

 RB> What that has to do with Noeiega is a mystery to me, and I presume to
 RB> most others here, but you appear to have a fixation on the case such
 RB> that you bring it up at every opportunity, whether it has any bearing
 RB> on the subject or not.

 RW>>>> Posession of an amount as large as $15,000 paid to someone who has
 RW>>>> a history of suspected criminal offenses would generate a lot of
 RW>>>> un-answerable questions.

 MvdV>>> Posession of $15000 in cash is not a criminal offence.

 RW>> Apparently it is, see above.

 RB> Naturally, Michiel's statement is perfectly correct, and this has
 RB> absolutely nothing to do with France, Noriega or anything else except
 RB> your own imagination.

 RB> ...Or is Noriega your cousin?

Note that Noriega was kidnapped from Panama to the US, and tried for violations
of US law, was convicted and spent 20 years in a US prison.  At the time he
supposedly violated those laws he was not IN or under the jurisdiction of the
US
government; IOW the US had no legitimate authority to try him.  Noriega's
actions,
whatever they were, were *not* illegal in Panama at the time they were taken.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)