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British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Slams the U.S. for trying to crush a corporate whistle-blower
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B.C. Supreme Court Judge Slams the U.S. for trying to crush a corporate whistle-blower
U.S. used 'unmitigated gall' and B.C. court to jail exec
Judge's stinging rebuke aimed at Cisco and U.S. prosecutors
By Ian Mulgrew, Vancouver Sun June 3, 2011
The giant computer company Cisco and U.S. prosecutors deceived Canadian authorities and courts in a massive abuse of process to have a former executive thrown in jail, says a B.C. Supreme Court judge.
The point, said Justice Ronald McKinnon in a stinging decision delivered orally on Tuesday, was to derail a lawsuit launched by the former employee, and involved a series of machinations that would make a normal person "blanch at the audacity of it all."
In a rare move, McKinnon stayed extradition proceedings against Peter Adekeye, a British computer entrepreneur who once worked for Cisco Systems, Inc.
The judge said U.S. prosecutors acted outrageously by having the respected executive bizarrely arrested in Vancouver on May 20, 2010 as he testified before a sitting of the American court he was accused of avoiding.
He called Adekeye's ordeal something out of a novel by Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22.
The RCMP took Adekeye into custody as he was testifying before a special U.S. hearing at the Wedgewood Hotel about the very case that supposedly required his urgent extradition.
Adekeye was perp-walked through the hotel lobby to a waiting police wagon.
"This speaks volumes for Cisco's duplicity," the judge said, adding the company had "the unmitigated gall" to try to use the criminal process to humiliate and force Adekeye to abandon a civil suit.
Adekeye was held in custody for 28 days and forced to remain in Canada until this week under strict bail conditions because of the false and misleading material from the U.S., McKinnon said.
Canadian Justice Department lawyer Diba Majzub argued that it didn't matter U.S. prosecutors falsely portrayed Adekeye as a Nigerian scofflaw who was a flight risk.
He filed three thick volumes of legal precedent and emphasized that only five times since the current Extradition Act was enacted in 1999 has a judge sought to stay proceedings because of abuse of process.
A stay required extraordinary misconduct, he said.
Justice McKinnon thought this case met the test and was flabbergasted by Adekeye's "shocking" arrest during a judicial proceeding: "It is simply not done in a civilized jurisdiction that is bound by the rule of law."
This was an egregious abuse of process and brought the administration of justice into disrepute, he concluded.
The U.S. claimed the problems were the result of the prosecutors' honestly held belief that Adekeye might flee the country, so it asked Canada to proceed under the emergency provisions of the Extradition Act.
Justice McKinnon said if Canada had known the true facts, it would not have proceeded.
"Almost nothing in the U.S. attorney's letter was true," Adekeye's lawyer Marilyn Sandford said Thursday.
Read more: [link to www.vancouversun.com]
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