Romanian fugitive loses extradition fight
Mihai Tanjala, Interpol photo
(CNS): A Romanian national convicted of corruption in his homeland in 2011 has lost an appeal in the Grand Court against extradition. Mihai Tanjala (58), who was the founder of the former secret police in the country, has been on the run from the Romanian authorities for several years and was arrested in Grand Cayman in October. He was detained at Owen Roberts Airport by immigration officials on the basis of an international warrant. The man had arrived in Cayman from Cuba in September but it was not until he tried to enter Jamaica that officials there linked him to the warrant and sent him back to Cayman.
Since his conviction by the court of appeal in Bucharest, where he was sentenced to a five-year jail term, he has also travelled to the Bahamas and the US.
Following his arrest here, he claimed asylum as he said he was innocent and had not had a fair trial due to political interference. Having failed to defeat the extradition order in Summary Court, despite claiming his life was at risk if he was returned, Tanjala appealed to the higher court.
Tanjala is accused of corruption relating to a property deal in which he enriched himself in a sale linked to the privatisation of former government assets in the communist country, where he had been a politician in the wake of the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime.
He allegedly sold the property part owned by the company he was managing and the state to his wife at a greatly reduced rate and the couple went on to sell the same property at a far higher price, manipulating his position to make a hefty profit.
Tanjala had appealed the extradition on a number of grounds, claiming he was innocent and indicating that his arrest and subsequent conviction was politically motivated, his trial was unjust and the offence is not a crime in Cayman. In the original hearing and during the appeal, the courts found that there were equitable crimes on Cayman’s statute books and so, in line with the extradition treaty between here and Romania, he was set to be deported.
Acting Justice Malcolm Swift, who heard the appeal and was in possession of all of the documents relating to the case in Romania, upheld the chief magistrate’s decision that Tanjala should be extradited.
In his ruling Justice Swift said he could find no link with Tanjala’s claims of impropriety relating to his prosecution and conviction and there was no evidence to suggest that he had not had a fair trial or that the proceedings were politically motivated. However, although the judge said it would not be unfair or unjust to deport the convicted man back to his home country, he raised concerns about human rights issues in Romanian jails.
“In light of what I have read … on human rights concerning prison conditions in Romanian, HE the governor may … consider seeking some assurances from the Romanian government as to the conditions in which the applicant will be detained whilst serving his sentence,” he said.
Category: Courts, Crime, World News
‘seeking some assurances from the Romanian government as to the conditions in which the applicant will be detained whilst serving his sentence’ And we care because why??
Who do you think you are? Just get him back to where he belongs.
How did he escape anyway????
Only the righteous may be called unkind.
And I see that no-one has commented on the fact that one of his grounds for appealing against the extradition was that what he did was “not a crime in Cayman”.
Why am I not surprised…….
It’s time for people to start to be fingerprinted as they land on our shores.
Considering the embarrassment of this crook’s discovery, why not, at minimum, have Immigration scrub the incoming passenger manifests against existing Interpol records? That’s easy to do and could start this afternoon.
The most archaic countries in the world has been finger-printing. What has caused the Cayman Islands government to be so backward??
why didn’t PPM seek to find where the money went and followed through with purchase of equipment? know it wasn’t a Dart issue but you guys the MLAs are supposed to be working for the people, but God don’t like ugly and the same criminals you refuse to help identify by getting proper equipment, enforcement officers might steal from you and your families or worse, that might be only time you all wake up
What, you mean like our law has provided for years?
It would be illegal to allow the police to access that information. So fingerprinting would not have the benefits you imagine.
This guy is one of the very dangerous KGB officer of Romania, still alive. He was able to run a very sophisticated,multi-national scheeme.One of his strategies is to intimidate all authorities including justice. Now he is the owner of the “strategic” airfield in Florida-USA. http://www.soarfl.com/Airfield_History.html ,which may serve his purpose. The individual belongs to his cell in Romania, he will “air” lots of news in the near future. Stay tune.
Send him on his way. The Romanian Government is anxiously waiting on him. They’ll know what to do with him once he gets there!
Wow, you sound like a Trumpista.
Strategic in what way? Get over yourself.
Makes you wonder how much other criminals that we may have here. Don’t we have an Interpol list?
Corruption? Property deal? Why send him back? He will fit right in here!
Spot on (hahahaaa)…sounds like many of the characters at-large on these islands…just look to the law firms, developers, foreign investors,and so on…a bunch of crooks!
That ain’t no crime our politicians do that all the time along with some of our illustrious foreign real estate agents Cayman is now attracting too many of these bottom feeders. Time for a general clean up and lets put some of them back on the plane.
Speaking of extradition, what ever happened with Hassan Syed? We got him back, and now what?
Years spent here living off of the hog. Syed’s case is a joke. This is the only place in the world where it takes a lifetime to get a case before the court and proceed. All you here is he can’t find a lawyer. A sick man being taken care of, money being spent and not one cent will be collected from smart Syed. Justice, trial and final verdict takes too long here.
It’s more than a bit ironic that without Jamaica’s INTERPOL-linked fingerprint ID system, this guy’s international warrant was unknown to Cayman’s Immigration Department and he might have lived happily below radar in Cayman for years.
It is also ironic that he had also travelled to the US without issue………………