Extraterritorial Jurisdiction and sovereignty. The Characterization of Foreign Predicate Offenses for Prosecution of Derivate Offenses (as Money Laundering) and the Consideration of Extraterritorial Conduct as Part of Territorial Offenses

Abstract

The question of any limits that a state's extraterritorial jurisdiction faces has not yet been fully addressed by international courts and tribunals. The aspect appears somewhat entrapped between the expansion of international criminal law - and the obligation to crack down on international crimes - and a creeping restoration in the form of a reaffirmation of the sovereignty and sovereign equality of states. Furthermore, the extraterritorial exercise of jurisdiction is frequently associated with the practice of lawfare, a neologism that combines the words law and warfare and identifies the use (and abuse) of the law to achieve a political end or, in a more restricted sense , a military end. Two collateral aspects of extraterritorial jurisdiction have recently been examined in decisions of international courts and tribunals. The International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in the decision in the case of the MV Norstar (Panama v. Italy) provided an interpretation of the freedom of navigation which prohibits the exercise of the so-called prescriptive jurisdiction (that is, the form of jurisdiction that is alongside the executive jurisdiction and that of ruling on a specific issue and concerns the possibility of extending the scope of its laws and rules) by coastal States with respect to conduct (or parts of conduct) that take place in deep sea. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the decision on Preliminary Objections in the Immunities and criminal proceedings (Equatorial Guinea v France) - pending on May 31, 2020 - has incidentally dealt with the 2000 Palermo Convention on transnational organized - a aspect of the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction in an indirect form: the characterization of entirely foreign conduct as a predicate crime in order to judge an accessory such as money laundering. The paper analyzes the two decisions in the light of the positions of the parties and their respective decisions.