Lawyers of Frederick Kumi, also known as Abu Trica, have filed a preliminary objection to the Extradition proceedings initiated against their client.
The lawyers argue that, per the UK and US Extradition Treaty of 1931, as well as the Extradition Act 1960, being enforced in Ghana, the charges levelled against Abu Trica are not extraditable offences.
Abu Trica has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering involving a $8million romance scam in the United States. He is said to have duped elderly US nationals and by a request from the FBI, is to be extradited to answer for the alleged crimes.
But lawyers of the 34-year-old entrepreneur maintain that neither wire fraud nor money laundering is expressly listed as an extraditable offence under the treaty, and the inclusion of conspiracy is limited to specific categories that do not apply in this case.
Lead counsel, Oliver Barker Vormawor, in the court document, is of the view that Ghana cannot rely on more recent domestic legislation to expand the treaty’s scope, insisting that extradition must strictly adhere to the offences agreed upon by the two states.
The Gbese Circuit Court will rule on the preliminary objection on Wednesday, March 25.
The grounds of the legal objection, according to Abu Trica’s lawyers, are that:Remove ads
(a) The substantive offences are not listed. Neither wire fraud nor money laundering appears, in any form or by any description, among the twenty-seven categories of extraditable offences enumerated in Article 3 of the Treaty. Wire fraud is a uniquely American statutory creation, enacted in 1952, that has no counterpart in British or Ghanaian criminal law. Money laundering did not exist as a criminal offence in any jurisdiction at the time the Treaty was concluded in 1931; it was first criminalised in 1986. The Treaty’s closed list cannot be expanded by analogy or by broad characterisation to encompass offences that were never contemplated by the contracting parties.
(b) Conspiracy to commit these offences is not extraditable. Article 3 of the Treaty recognises the inchoate offence of conspiracy in connection with only two categories of listed offences: murder
(Item 1) and revolt on the high seas (Item 26(b)). The selective inclusion of conspiracy in those two items, and its deliberate omission from all others, compels the conclusion that conspiracy was intended to he extraditable only in those two specified contexts. The residual participation clause at the foot of Article 38 does not extend to conspiracy; it addresses accessory liability in the nature of aiding, abetting, counselling, and procuring, which is a categorically different species of criminal responsibility.
(c) The Republic’s own concession is fatal to its case. At paragraph 14 of its Written Address filed in these proceedings, the Republic accepted that “[a]n offence is extraditable if it is identified as extraditable by a treaty between Ghana and the Republic’s conspiracy Requesting to subsequent commit attempt either at offence paragraph is 8 16 to identified rely On The State.” Neither wire fraud, money laundering, nor Cybersecurity Act, 2020 (Act 1038), as a basis for rendering these offences extraditable, contradicts its own concession and is legally untenable:
A unilateral amendment to domestic legislation cannot alter the scope of obligations assumed under a bilateral treaty.
Source:3news