Iulian Beraru v Bucharest Court - First Criminal Division Romania

On an extradition appeal, the High Court must decide whether the district judge’s decision was wrong within the statutory appeal test. It is not a rehearing or an opportunity to reargue the weight of the evidence.

For dual criminality, the court examines the conduct alleged in the warrant and further information, rather than matching foreign offences to equivalent domestic offences. The inevitable-inference test is confined to ensuring that an essential element of the domestic offence is necessarily disclosed. The ordinary inference test applies in other respects.

A proposed less coercive alternative under Extradition Act 2003 section 21A must be compatible with UK sovereignty and applicable international arrangements. Informal remote participation without the UK’s consent will not ordinarily satisfy that requirement.

The appellant appealed against District Judge Clews’s order of 9 June 2023 directing his extradition to Romania under an accusation warrant issued by the Bucharest Court. He had permission to appeal on dual criminality under sections 10 and 64 of the Extradition Act 2003.

He sought permission to add grounds alleging that extradition was disproportionate because he could participate remotely in the Romanian proceedings, and that continued pursuit of the warrant was an abuse of process. The central issues were whether the warrant and further information disclosed conduct amounting to relevant extra-territorial offences, whether remote participation was a legally available less coercive alternative, and whether the extradition process had been improperly used.

1. Appeal test. Under sections 26 and 27 of the Extradition Act 2003, the High Court could allow the appeal only if the district judge ought to have decided a question differently and that different decision would have required discharge. The appeal was not a rehearing of the evidence or a general reconsideration of evaluative weight.
2. Dual criminality. The alleged conduct occurred in the United Kingdom, so section 64(4) applied. Following El-Khouri v USA [2025] UKSC 3, the court had to construct the statutory mirror-image hypothesis for conduct outside the requesting territory. The inquiry concerned the conduct alleged, not a comparison of the constituent elements of the Romanian offences.
3. The warrant and further information sufficiently alleged participation in an organised criminal enterprise involving prostitution, human trafficking and the movement and laundering of criminal proceeds. The allegations had to be read as a whole and not treated as isolated acts personally performed by the appellant. The requirements of conspiracy under section 1A of the Criminal Law Act 1977 were sufficiently disclosed. The dual-criminality ground therefore failed.
4. The court adopted the distinction explained in Cleveland v United States of America [2019] EWHC 619 (Admin). The inevitable-inference test in Assange v Swedish Prosecution Authority [2011] EWHC 2849 (Admin) applied where an essential domestic ingredient had to be necessarily disclosed. The ordinary test in Zak v Poland [2008] EWHC 470 (Admin) applied to matters such as conspiracy or assistance. Applying either approach did not alter the result.
5. Proportionality. Permission was granted to advance the section 21A ground and to rely on the further evidence, but the ground was dismissed. The alleged offending was serious and likely to attract a substantial sentence. Romania had already attempted to secure attendance by summons, had issued the warrant, and had rejected applications based on remote participation. Those decisions were entitled to substantial weight.
6. A less coercive alternative under section 21A had to be compatible with UK sovereignty and policy. The Second Additional Protocol to the European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters created a package of obligations and protections concerning evidence or participation by video conference. Informal remote participation without a request for mutual legal assistance and without UK consent could not properly be treated as the relevant less coercive alternative.
7. Abuse of process. Permission to advance the proposed abuse ground was refused. Continuing to pursue extradition while allowing limited participation in delayed proceedings was not inconsistent or abusive. The argument could not be repackaged under abuse of process after failing under proportionality.
8. The appeal was dismissed.

• High Court (Administrative Court): District Judge Clews’s extradition order was upheld. The appeal was dismissed.
• District Judge Clews: Extradition was ordered on 9 June 2023 after rejecting challenges under section 2, sections 10, 11 and 19B, and article 8 of the ECHR.