Pension Fraud Suspects Use ECHR to Fight Deportation
A divorced couple accused of a £26 million South American pension fraud have used the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to avoid being extradited from Britain. The Telegraph has the story.
The European couple, who came to Britain 18 years ago, are alleged to have been involved in money laundering and defrauding a state pension fund in Paraguay out of the money.
The couple – who cannot be named for legal reasons – have been on the run since 2012, when an Interpol warrant was issued for their arrest and the Paraguayan government sought to extradite them to stand trial for the alleged fraud.
They have fought their removal from the UK since their arrests in 2015, through a series of court appeals and tribunal hearings, on the basis that the prison conditions in which they would be held in Paraguay would breach their article three rights under the ECHR. Article three protects against inhuman or degrading treatment.
Over the decade, they lost every appeal until finally an upper immigration tribunal accepted that their declining medical conditions and new evidence casting doubt on Paraguay’s assurances over the prison conditions meant their case needed to be re-heard in full.
The case will reinforce calls by opposition parties for the UK to quit the ECHR and for Labour to press ahead with plans to limit the right for migrants to lodge multiple appeals by introducing new evidence at different stages of the legal process.
Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, is seeking to reform article three of the ECHR to prevent migrants using it to claim that poor prison conditions or inadequate medical care in a foreign country gives them the right to avoid deportation and remain in the UK.
In the hearings, Paraguay insisted it would provide the couple with special secure accommodation to ensure they are kept away from the general prison population during their detention pending their trial.
These assurances satisfied the judge at Westminster magistrates’ court, who was told that the husband, known only as MS, would be held in a unit run by a Christian charity away from the main prison population in the notorious and violent Tacumbú jail in Asunción.
His ex-wife, known only as EG, would be held in a “senior citizens pavilion”, a distinct area of the Buen Pastor women’s prison in Paraguay, which has bigger cells and amenities such as a shower, toilet, refrigerator, and air conditioning.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Once again, why is it our problem?
If you can’t do the time don’t do the sodding crime.
I’ve had enough.
👍👍👍
As usual, at the end of the day who is picking up the ruddy tab?
I don’t suppose this couple have parted with any of their apparently ill-gotten gains in order to fund their last ten years in this country? Nor will they have paid any of their legal costs so the solicitors will have had a right butty at our expense and no doubt they cannot work and have required somewhere comfy to live. I cannot see a bill less than one million over the last ten years and now we have copped for everything until they die. At which point the poor bloody taxpayers will be left with their effing funeral expenses.
As Jack t D says, “enough.” I too am firkin sick of it.
Shebana Mahmood is seeking to Reform ECHR. Don’t insult our intelligence, she is in no position to do any such thing. More firkin bullshit.
Slightly Off-T.
An eloquent, detailed and respectful synopsis of the career and man that is Tommy Robinson. A hero of our time and worthy of our respect.
Tom Armstrong at Free Speech Backlash.
“Tribute To Tommy
FSB’s British Hero Of The Year”
https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/tribute-tommy#:~:text=Tribute%20To%20Tommy,Of%20The%20Year
The ECHR doesn’t apply to acts of governments which aren’t signatories of it. When the government of Great Britain extradites these two fraudsters to Paraguy, it doesn’t subject them to inhuman or degrading treatment, it just hands them over the the authorities responsible for prosecuting the crime they committed. These authorities may, in turn, treat them in a way somebody might consider inhuman and degrading but that’s their business and not the business of the politicians in London and not covered by a European convention on human rights as Paraguy isn’t a signatory of that or even in Europe at all.
Mahmood needs to ‘reform’ the British judiciary, specifically, purge so-called judges whose sole professional business is apparently perverting the course of justice using the most flimsy pretexts. Changing the legal texts these people abuse for their formally illegal political actions won’t help. But since these are “Labour’s judges”, she obviously doesn’t want that.
That’s unfortunately not the case.
Which bit
Sure, but, I can imagine wanting to protect a person from a despotic country with no rule of law, who’s accused of a crime that isn’t really a crime e.g. hate speech, for which an unreasonable penalty may be inflicted. However, Paraguay is a democratic republic with an independant judiciary and pension fraud is a particularly evil crime. It would be evil to not send them back. And in any case, it should be for a spanish speaking country to take them in – as they’d be better equipped to judge the merits of their asylum claim. It’s just wrong to protect these people from the consequences of their actions and it’s not the job of the UK to intervene anyway in this case.
The ECHR / HRA is basically a protection racket for terrorists and criminals …. and a money-making SCAM for HR lawyers.
More proof we have become the repository of every criminal on earth.
That’s an idea I had earlier today. While the human rights claim is arguable, the solution cannot be that people commit a serious crime which causes serious misery for members of the public in a foreign country and then travel to Britain to live happily everthereafter with their ill-gotten gains because of their human rights.