Extradition and Mutual Assistance

The Matrix mutual legal assistance and extradition team is ranked as a leading set by Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners. Managed by a ‘highly professional’ practice team that is ‘exceptionally helpful and efficient’ (Legal 500 2019), the team’s “strength in depth speaks for itself” (Legal 500 2020) and members appear “in the most high-profile and complex cases at home and abroad” (Chambers & Partners 2020).

Mutual criminal legal assistance is now one of the most significant, and fast-emerging, areas of criminal practice and meaningful effective pre-charge assistance is often crucial to avoiding extradition exposure. A significant part of the work that the team undertakes involves providing confidential advice to corporate and individual clients to safeguard against extradition exposure in cross-border criminal cases, especially those involving parallel investigation by the FCA / SFO and DoJ involving allegations of financial crime and corruption.

Matrix’s broad cross-disciplinary practice makes it particularly adept at assembling and coordinating multi-jurisdictional legal teams in order to tackle pre-charge criminal exposure.

The team has particular experience in the strategic utilisation of the extensive range of international law pre-charge investigatory cooperation measures to avoid situations escalating to the point of charge.

Matrix also offers significant expertise in relation to Interpol Red Notice challenges. The team has enjoyed considerable success in dealing with politicised or politically motivated Red Notices and diffusions, including in securing their immediate suspension.

In the event that a charge is unavoidable, Matrix possesses many of England’s leading and specialist extradition practitioners. Members of the team appear in the most high profile and complex cases and include the authors and editors of the principal extradition law textbook; Nicholls, Montgomery & Knowles on Extradition, OUP. Over the past two decades the team has been at the forefront of every significant development of this area of the law; from General Pinochet to Julian Assange.

Members are regularly called upon to advise and act in proceedings throughout the common law community globally, including the Caribbean and Asia, and before the Privy Council.