Bankers' rights

Two long articles from the FT Magazine, 18 Dec:

Extradition entreaty    - US prosecutors have accused three UK bankers of fraud, yet the alleged victim, a British bank, has not pressed charges and nor have the UK financial authorities. Now the trio are fighting against being sent to trial in Texas under a legal process intended for terrorists.

Caste out    - The reign of the enarques is coming to an end in Paris

From the first :

Since the case has come to light, the question of the Enron Three’s guilt or innocence has been, to a large extent, beside the point. What is most interesting about the case is that here are three Britons who are alleged to have committed a crime in Britain in which the victim (NatWest, now RBS) is British, but who face being sent for trial in Texas under an extradition treaty agreed between the US and the UK as part of the “global war on terror”.
...
“If you send an e-mail [on what turns out to be a contentious matter] from London to Edinburgh via a [US-based] Cisco server... you’re fucked. All it needs is an aggressive prosecutor. They don’t even need any prima facie evidence.”
...
Mulgrew, who went to see Liberty, did not expect the organisation to be particularly interested in his case. ... In fact, Liberty welcomed him. After all, cases involving people from ethnic minorities can be even harder to promote in the mainstream media. To put that another way, three rich bankers may not appeal to everybody, but they’re probably less loathed than Abu Hamza.
...
Friends have established a website, www.friendsextradited.org, which sets out the issues and invites comments from supporters.

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Peter Aspden on Krakow's Communism Tours (FT Magazine, 11 Dec - not online) : 'the leaflet alone was a delight: starkly coloured in black, red and yellow, a dramatic picture of the city's infamous Nowa Huta district'. (See)