Canada blocks extradition of Cisco suspect

03.06.2011
A Canadian judge has blocked the extradition of a former Cisco Systems executive and slammed that company and U.S. authorities for allegedly duping Canadian officials into arresting him.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver, British Columbia, last May as he testified in a civil lawsuit involving his alleged theft of software from Cisco. The case was a countersuit that Cisco had filed after Alfred-Adekeye sued the company for alleged antitrust violations. He had claimed Cisco illegally required customers to buy service contracts in order to get software updates and patches.

U.S. attorneys had sought Alfred-Adekeye's arrest so they could extradite him to the U.S., where they said he with a possible sentence of five years for each count. But on Tuesday, Justice Ronald McKinnon of the British Columbia Supreme Court said those officials used false and misleading information to persuade other Canadian judges to order the arrest, according to Alfred-Adekeye's attorney, Marilyn Sandford. The Vancouver Sun Friday.

The U.S. Department of Justice requested an emergency extradition of Alfred-Adekeye, saying he was a flight risk. Alfred-Adekeye, who was released on bail 28 days after his arrest but forced to stay in Vancouver, has now returned to his home in Switzerland, Sandford said.

In an oral decision on Tuesday, McKinnon said Cisco seemed to have orchestrated the arrest to intimidate Alfred-Adekeye from pursuing his antitrust case against the company, according to Sandford.

"Here we have a man who has no criminal record, who made every possible effort to comply with U.S. immigration laws and procedures, but who dared to take on a multinational giant, rewarded with criminal charges that have been so grotesquely inflated as to make the average well-informed member of the public blanch at the audacity of it all," Sandford said, quoting from her notes on the judge's speech. A transcript of the decision has not yet been made available, she said. Supreme Court officials could not be reached for comment.