Fixers, kingpins, and drug traffickers wanted and convicted in Italy may soon return from their gilded hiding places in the United Arab Emirates. The Council of Ministers, acting on a proposal from Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Angelino Alfano, today approved a bill ratifying and implementing the extradition treaty between Italy and the United Arab Emirates, signed in Abu Dhabi on September 16, 2015—with exchanges of notes in the UAE capital on November 27, 2017, and January 17, 2018—and the treaty on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters between Italy and the Gulf country, signed in Abu Dhabi on September 16, 2015. The Presidency of the Council of Ministers announced this in a statement. The extradition treaty obliges the parties, mutually, to surrender wanted persons located on their respective territories, to initiate criminal proceedings or to enable the execution of a final sentence. Extradition will be granted when the act being prosecuted or has been prosecuted in the requesting State is also considered a crime under the law of the requested State (principle of double criminality). This principle is tempered in tax matters, where it is established that extradition may be granted even when the laws of the requested State differ from those of the requesting State. Procedural extradition also requires that the crime being prosecuted be punishable by imprisonment for at least one year in both countries. Executive extradition, however, requires that the remaining sentence correspond to a minimum of six months. Finally, there are specific cases in which extradition must be denied, and others in which it may be denied.
However, the treaty will need to be ratified by the new Parliament to become effective and allow the return to Italy of a dozen fugitives. These include, among others, former Forza Italia MP Amedeo Matacena, definitively convicted of external complicity in mafia association; Giancarlo Tulliani, brother-in-law of Gianfranco Fini who has fled to Dubai; and drug trafficker Raffaele Imperiale, known as Lelluccio o' Parente, from Castellammare di Stabia, who flooded Italy with drugs in recent years and financed the first Camorra war between the Scissionisti degli Amato Pagano, to whom he was linked, and the Di Lauro family. He rose to fame last year for hiding two stolen Van Gogh paintings stolen in Holland in 2002 in his parents' home on the outskirts of Castellammare. And then there's Samuele Landi, former CEO of Eutelia, sentenced to nine months in prison in 2015 for the company's collapse. "This is another step in the right direction," commented Democratic Party MP Davide Mattiello, who has long been advocating for this measure. "I thank Prime Minister Gentioni and Minister Orlando: now it will also be possible to put an end to the shameless absconding in the Emirates, which is taking place in broad daylight. The lack of cooperation has thus far made it very difficult for the Italian authorities to intervene."
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