Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
1. The principle of double criminality is traditionally bound with institutions of international criminal law. Double criminality is a requirement not only with extradition, but also with the transfer of criminal proceedings and with execution of foreign sentences. International criminal law employs a range of “double conditions”, the common denominator of which is the requirement that two legal systems share a certain set of values or legal prescriptions. In addition to double criminality, international law uses such terms as “double punishability”, the “double possibility of criminal proceedings” and the “double possibility of the execution of penal judgment”. Among these concepts, double criminality is the most important and universal condition applied in the basic institutions of international criminal law, such as extradition, the transfer of proceedings, and the execution of foreign penal judgments.
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5 See Plachta, supra n. 1, at 107.
6 P. O. Träskman, “Should We Take the Condition of Double Criminality Seriously?” in N. Jareborg, ed., supra n. 1.
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10 The provision reads as follows:
Fiscal offences:
1) For offences in connection with taxes, duties, customs and exchange extradition shall take place between Contracting Parties in accordance with the provisions of the Convention if the offence under the law of the requested Party, corresponds to an offence of the same nature.
2) Extradition may not be refused on the ground that the law of the requested Party does not impose the same kind of tax or duly or does not contain a tax, duty, customs or exchange regulation of the same kind as the law of the requesting Party”.
11 See Explanatory Report on the Second Additional Protocol to the European Convention on Extradition (Strasbourg, 1978) 8.
12 See Lagodny, supra n. 3, at 42.
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19 Swart, supra n. 2, at 17.