Fighting cross-border crime: Options for co-operation with the UAE

Technological advances have provided great opportunities for people to connect. Unfortunately, those same opportunities are available to criminals who abuse global infrastructure for unlawful benefit and seek to take advantage of complications involved in cross-border investigations and prosecutions in the hope of getting away with the fruits of their crimes.

The fight against the willingness of criminals to evade detection and capture, by hiding their assets and themselves from the authorities where the crime was committed, requires governments to co-operate. One example of such co-operation is the process of Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA).

Co-operation between governments

MLA is the formal process by which one state provides assistance to another with legal processes such as: 1) serving documents; 2) taking testimonies or statements from persons; 3) providing documents and evidence; 4) locating persons; 5) conducting inquiries; 6) executing requests for searches and seizures; 7) freezing and forfeiting the proceeds of criminal activities and instruments used to commit crimes; and 8) extradition. Extradition is a specific form of MLA, being the process by which a person is transferred by the requested state to the requesting state for prosecution or punishment for criminal activity within the jurisdiction of the requesting state.

Andrew Hudson is a senior associate of the financial crime department at Al Tamimi & Company