🇮🇹 Italy → 🇺🇸 United States

The requested person challenged his extradition from Italy to the United States on several grounds, including allegedly inadequate detention conditions, the failure to transmit the original arrest warrant underlying the provisional arrest, lack of double criminality and the risk of a subsequent reclassification of the charges into an offence punishable by death. The Supreme Court held that the official information supplied by the United States was sufficiently specific to exclude a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment. It further ruled that the failure to transmit the original warrant was cured by the subsequent production, together with the extradition request, of a new warrant issued for the same offences following indictment, since the extradition title may be formally replaced before the Court of Appeal decides the case. The complaints concerning double criminality and the death penalty were also rejected, and extradition was upheld.

Traditional extradition treaties refer to institutions of the criminal law of individual States — such as double criminality — for the specific purpose of allowing the requested State to assess the 'recognisability' and therefore the acceptability of the punitive claim of the requesting State, thereby ensuring the requirement of reciprocity. As regards criminal thresholds, the bilateral treaty with the United States contains no specific provisions on this point, which means that the double criminality requirement must be assessed according to the ordinary rules — that is, by way of a concrete, in concreto verification.

The United States requested the extradition of the appellant to face charges of conspiracy, computer fraud, bank fraud and currency smuggling. The appellant argued, inter alia, that an earlier refusal of the same extradition request by Spain created a ne bis in idem bar, that the offences did not satisfy the double-criminality requirement and that the prosecution was time-barred under Italian law. The Supreme Court held that the Spanish decision, which was based on the absence of assurances concerning the place where any sentence would be served, did not amount to a final determination on the merits capable of preventing Italy from considering the request. It further held that conspiracy and the fraud charges satisfied the applicable treaty requirements, whereas currency smuggling had been decriminalised in Italy and therefore failed the double-criminality test. The judgment was consequently quashed without remand only in respect of the currency-smuggling charge, while the appeal was dismissed in all other respects.

The case concerned an extradition request by the United States for two requested persons accused in the Southern District of New York of conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to distribute narcotics. The requested persons challenged the surrender decision on several grounds, including lack of translation of the extradition request, insufficiency of the supporting documents, lack of serious indications of guilt, absence of double criminality, and the existence of related criminal proceedings in Italy. The Italian Supreme Court held that, under the Italy–United States extradition treaty, the Italian court is not required to carry out an autonomous assessment of the evidential basis of the accusation, but only to verify that the summary of facts explains why, from the perspective of the requesting State, it is probable that the requested persons committed the offences. The Court also held that double criminality does not require exact correspondence between the legal classifications in the two systems: the US offence of conspiracy may correspond to Italian associative offences, including criminal association and drug-trafficking association. As to the alleged Italian proceedings, the Court found no total identity of facts and held that any territoriality-based refusal under the treaty was optional and fell within the competence of the Minister of Justice, not the judicial authority. The appeals were therefore dismissed and the extradition order upheld.