Today, many significant white-collar cases have cross-border implications. Often the presence of defendants for trial in cases pursued by U.S. authorities can only be obtained with the assistance of foreign authorities. To ensure such cooperation, in recent years the federal government has entered into or updated extradition and law enforcement treaties with a number of other nations to better facilitate the extradition process.1 The result has been a significant increase in the return and prosecution of persons located on foreign soil. According to the Department of Justice figures quoted in The Wall Street Journal, 579 individuals were extradited to the United States in 2008—double the number reported in 2000.2
This uptick is partly due to increasing international law enforcement attributable to the growing number of multinational financial institutions and the borderless trade and communication caused by technological innovations. White-collar practitioners have seen a growth in international investigations involving antitrust, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, tax evasion, and securities law violations, among other things. Extradition is necessarily an important issue in such cases. For instance, the United States currently is seeking the extradition of Leroy King, the former banking supervisor of the government of Antigua, for his role in a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme run by jailed Texas financier R. Allen Stanford.3
