[2025] EWHC 1956 (Admin)

The point of embarkation to my reconsideration is to recognise that the landscape has shifted. The appellant has served the entirety of the AW1 sentence. Thus, I do not consider it in the proportionality analysis; the Judge did, and correctly at that earlier stage. As time has moved on, the appellant has served a little over 2 months’ custody for any custodial term imposed for the AW2 offences. These are material changes. But I have earlier explained how I find that it is likely that the appellant would receive a custodial sentence of at least 6 months’ custody if convicted on AW2. Mr Hepburne Scott correctly abandoned his submission of early release during oral submissions once reminded of the terms stipulated by the Supreme Court in Andrysiewicz. As explained, I cannot accept his submission that the frauds under AW2 would likely receive a community penalty or a suspended sentence or at a maximum 2 months’ custody. Such a proposal substantially underestimates the circumstances of their commission and the very serious and aggravating antecedents of the appellant. He has two offences of very serious dishonesty that aggravate the fraud offences, the robberies in both Lithuania and Finland. An offender who commits further offences from prison while serving other offences is a clear risk to the public, particularly when the cause of his imprisonment is firearms-related crime resulting in a 9-year-plus sentence. It seems to me that suspending the sentence is out of the question. I therefore proceed in the altered legal landscape on the basis that the appellant at this point still has a substantial and significant custodial sentence to serve on conviction under AW2.

In Celinski, the Divisional Court stated at para 39 that where a requested person is a fugitive from justice, very strong counterbalancing factors need to exist before extradition could be regarded as disproportionate. The Judge found to the requisite criminal standard that the appellant is a fugitive. That finding has not been challenged, nor plausibly could be, especially given the RP’s materially rejected account. Having examined all the factors in his favour, they individually and cumulatively come nowhere near to the high threshold necessary to counterbalance the “constant and weighty” public interest, as Baroness termed it, in returning him for the Lithuanian judicial authorities to decide how to treat his case once he has surrendered.

I cannot identify the necessary “exceptionally severe impact”. I note, for example, that the appellant’s partner told the Judge that following her cancer diagnosis, she had assistance with the younger three children as her 19-year-old daughter (her fourth child) “was at home and helped her” (para 71). Therefore, she does have a support network to draw on if necessary. She also told the Judge that usually she (the partner) picked the children up from school (para 72). On the day she gave evidence, a friend stepped in to help her out with the children. Therefore, she has family and friends. Although she said that she does not want to “disturb” her daughter if she needed further help with the children, it is clear that the eldest daughter stepped in previously (para 80). I note, however, that the daughter does not live nearby. Overall, it is hard to conceive of this as a situation in which she cannot cope or which is resulting in exceptionally severe adverse impacts. While I accept in principle Mr Hepburne Scott’s broad submission that a negative impact on the primary carer may impact the children indirectly due to her limited emotion availability to them, there is very little evidence to indicate that this is in fact the case. Their mother seems on the evidence before the Judge to be a loving, concerned and attentive parent, who has coped with the appellant’s absence through remand. There is no evidence indicating that this could not continue. Indeed, she works as a freelance interpreter while the children are at school.

As to the impact on the appellant of the separation from his partner and her children by return to Lithuania, he developed his family and private life in the United Kingdom in full knowledge that he was a fugitive from Lithuania. Therefore, he deepened his ties with his partner and her children knowing that he may be returned to Lithuania to face criminal proceedings there. He has taken that obvious risk.

I judge that the grounds the appellant puts forward to oppose extradition are not “very strong”, as submitted to me, but weak and carry little weight in the renewed balancing exercise. I cannot accept that the AW2 offences are “not serious” as the appellant submits. The appellant in part relies on the assessment by the Judge at para 118 that the AW2 offences are “not the most serious”. That is objectively correct: they are not the most serious. But I judge that they are serious. This is because the overall gravity of offending must be judged by the harm and culpability, and viewed in the context of the offending history of the offender. It is submitted that the AW1 fraud was more serious because it was a fraud on the banking system. However, the AW2 frauds were targeted at individual members of the public who may have fewer resources to cope with the monetary loss than a large financial institution. The impact on individuals cannot be underestimated in terms of the livelihoods and sense of security and confidence of victims. It is true, as the respondents submit, that the offences are not in the list of specified offences for which it would be disproportionate to make an extradition order. But the court retains the duty for non-list offences to carefully assess the seriousness, and this I have endeavoured to do.

That said, I do accept the appellant’s submission that the court must be cautious about reading across from the AW1 Lithuanian sentence as the respondent invites the court to do. The argument runs that the Lithuanian sentence of 15 months’ custody appears to exceed the sentencing levels compared to an application of domestic sentencing guidelines. Therefore, this makes it more likely that the sentence for AW2 would exceed the 5B guideline. I agree with Mr Hepburne Scott that from this distance, and without the sentencing remarks from Lithuania, we simply do not know why a sentence of 15 months’ custody was imposed. It seems to me to involve perilous speculation to try to deduce the reasoning of the Lithuanian court and I decline to do so. Indeed, in Celinski, the Divisional Court said in terms about conviction warrant cases at para 13:

“The judge at the extradition hearing will seldom have the detailed knowledge of the proceedings or of the background or previous offending history of the offender which the sentencing judge had”

I take the point that we also do not know about any remand time that was or was not allowed for. The better course, and the one I adopt, is to do the court’s best to apply the domestic guidelines. Having done so, and when all the relevant factors are properly assessed, the likely sentence is at least 6 months’ custody for the two offences committed in prison hard on the heels of the AW1 fraud. If proved, the AW2 offences are not trivial or negligible acts of criminal offending. They are planned and premeditated acts group offending targeting multiple victims by a person persistently committing fraud against members of the public, even when he is in prison. I judge that the fact the offences were committed while incarcerated in Lithuania having been returned for the United Kingdom to serve the balance of a sentence for very serious firearms offences to be a factor of particular gravity. Consequently, I cannot accept the submission that there is a “relative weak public interest” in the appellant’s extradition. I reach the opposite conclusion. I take note of what Swift J said in Vascenkovs at para 10:

“the court should allow a significant margin before concluding extradition would be disproportionate, since reaching such a conclusion too readily could call into question the requesting authority’s decision to issue the warrant (as a disproportionate use of that court’s power).”

I regard this as part of mutual recognition and respect. International comity remains a vital consideration and the United Kingdom must meet its treaty obligations. This country cannot become or become regarded as a safe haven for fugitives from justice.