{"id":20048,"date":"2012-03-29T00:39:26","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T04:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/?p=20048"},"modified":"2012-03-29T00:39:26","modified_gmt":"2012-03-29T04:39:26","slug":"privy-council-says-no-to-kozeny-extradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2012\/03\/privy-council-says-no-to-kozeny-extradition","title":{"rendered":"Privy Council Says &#8216;No&#8217; To Kozeny Extradition"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_20056\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-20056\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-20056\" title=\"viktor-kozeny-sm\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/viktor-kozeny-sm.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/viktor-kozeny-sm.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/viktor-kozeny-sm-150x100.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-20056\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Viktor Kozeny<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Viktor Kozeny, the Czech-born businessman wanted in the U.S. on bribery charges will not be extradited to New York from the Bahamas, the U.K.-based Privy Council ruled.<\/p>\n<p>The Privy Council yesterday affirmed a 2010 ruling by a Bahamas court refusing extradition. Kozeny, dubbed &#8220;the Pirate of Prague&#8221; in media reports, has been sought by U.S. prosecutors since 2005. He also faces unrelated fraud charges in the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n<p>After the charges were unsealed in 2005, Kozeny spent 19 months in Her Majesty&#8217;s Prison at Fox Hill before being released to his family&#8217;s home in Lyford Cay, from where he has fought extradition.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have prevailed on all points,&#8221; Kozeny, 48, said today in an interview from the Bahamas, which he hasn&#8217;t left since 1999.<\/p>\n<p>Kozeny expressed gratitude toward his lawyers and said he &#8220;felt truly vindicated&#8221; by the ruling. &#8220;They said it&#8217;s not a crime in the Bahamas,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They said it&#8217;s not a violation of the code over here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The unanimous ruling by the five-judge council probably eliminates any chance that Kozeny will be returned to the U.S., where he faces federal charges for organizing a 1998 scheme to bribe government officials in Azerbaijan in return for rights to buy Socar, the state oil company.<\/p>\n<p>The Privy Council said in a 22-page decision that it lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. It said Kozeny may not be extradited for bribery crimes that &#8220;would not constitute offenses against the law of the Bahamas if they took place within the Bahamas.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The panel didn&#8217;t rule on the merits of the U.S. bribery case. The appeal of the prior extradition ruling was pursued by Bahamas prosecutors and supported by U.S. authorities.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em><strong>Source:\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/news\/2012-03-28\/kozeny-won-t-be-extradited-to-u-dot-s-dot-u-dot-k-dot-privy-council-rules\" target=\"_blank\">Business Week<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8216;Pirate of Prague&#8217; will not be extradited from The Bahamas to the United States, where he is accused of orchestrating a massive bribery scheme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[93,32,31,113],"class_list":["post-20048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-corruption","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}