MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
Roger Darin seeks to dismiss the criminal complaint filed against him by the United States of America (the “Government”), which alleges that he conspired with co-defendant Tom Alexander William Hayes to commit wire fraud by manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (“LIBOR”) for Yen. The motion is denied.
Background
LIBOR is “the primary global benchmark for short-term interest rates.” (Complaint, attached as Exh. A to Declaration of Bruce A. Baird dated Oct. 2, 2014, ¶ 7). During the relevant time period (roughly 2006-2009), .the British Bankers’ Association (“BBA”) administered the LI-BOR for Yen through its agent Thomson Reuters, which solicited each day from sixteen member banks “the rate at which members of the bank’s staff primarily responsible for management of the bank’s cash perceive that the bank can borrow unsecured funds from another bank in the designated currency over the specified maturity.” (Complaint, ¶¶ 7-9; Memorandum of Law in Support of Defendant Roger Darin’s Motion to Dismiss the Criminal Complaint (“Def. Memo.”) at 1). After excluding the highest and 1 lowest four rates, Thomson Reuters averaged the remaining eight to derive the Yen LIBOR figure for the day. (Complaint, ¶ 10; Def. Memo, at 1-2). The resulting rate was widely published, including in New York. (Complaint, ¶ 10).
Member banks of the Yen LIBOR panel such as UBS AG (“UBS”) trade Yen LI-BOR-based derivative products. (Complaint, ¶¶ 12, 17). One such product, an “interest rate swap,” is an arrangement between two parties in which
each party agrees to pay either a fixed or floating rate denominated in a particular currency to the other party. The fixed or floating rate is multiplied by a notional principal amount to calculate the cash flows which must be exchanged at settlement. This notional amount generally does not change hands.
(Complaint, ¶ 17). An interest rate swap is “effectively [a] wager[ ] on the direction in which Yen LIBOR [will] move.” (Complaint, ¶ 18). Traders are compensated, in part, based on the profitability of their trading positions. (Complaint, ¶ 18).
The Complaint alleges that both Mr. Darin and Mr. Hayes worked at UBS and traded in short-term interest rates. Mr.
The Government filed the Complaint in December 2012. It charges Mr. Darin with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 1349, by engaging in the activities outlined above. Mr. Darin, a Swiss citizen living in Switzerland, now seeks to dismiss the Complaint, arguing that it violates his Fifth Amendment right to due process. Specifically, he contends that, as “a foreign national ] [charged] with conspiring to manipulate a foreign financial benchmark, for a foreign currency, while working for a foreign bank, in a foreign country,” he lacks a sufficient nexus to the United States and did not have constitutionally adequate notice that his alleged conduct was criminal. (Def. Memo, at 1-2). In addition, he argues that prosecuting him under these circumstances would violate the presumption against extraterritorial application of American law.
Discussion
The Government opposes Mr. Darin’s substantive arguments but also contends that the Fifth Amendment is inapplicable at this juncture and that the fugitive disen-titlement doctrine counsels against addressing the constitutional and statutory
A. Applicability of the Fifth Amendment
Relying primarily on Johnson v. Eisentrager,
Eisentrager concerned the post-World War II conviction by a United States military tribunal in China of a number of German nationals for “violating the laws of war[ ] by engaging in, permitting or ordering continued military activity against the United States after surrender of Germany and before surrender of Japan.”
That is too facile a reading. Boumediene v. Bush warned against a “formalis[tic]” application o.f Eisentrager because the extraterritorial application of constitutional principles “turn[s] on objective factors and practical concerns.”
To be sure, the Court in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez,
In his concurring opinion in Verdugo-Urquidez, Justice Kennedy reasoned that constitutional protections must be interpreted “in light of the undoubted power of the United States to take actions to assert its legitimate power and authority abroad,” and he concluded that, where “[t]he United States is prosecuting a foreign national in a court establishéd under Article III, [ ] all of the trial proceedings are governed by the Constitution. All would agree, for instance, that the dictates of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment protect the defendant.” Verdugo-Urquidez,
Other cases bear this out. For example, the defendant in In re Hijazi was a Lebanese citizen residing in Kuwait, indicted in an Illinois federal court.
B. Fugitive Disentitlement Doctrine
The Government next argues that I should decline to address Mr. Da
articulated four rationales for applying the fugitive disentitlement doctrine: 1) assuring the enforceability of any decision that may be rendered against the fugitive; 2) imposing a penalty for flouting the judicial process; 3) discouraging flights from justice and promoting the efficient operation of the courts; and 4) avoiding prejudice to the other side caused by the defendant’s escape.
Bano v. Union Carbide Corp.,
1. Fugitive Status
The first question is a thorny one. See, e.g., United States v. Bokhari,
Here, Mr. Darin’s intent to avoid prosecution is clear. His counsel asserts that the Complaint “has effectively confined Mr. Darin to Switzerland” and that “if the court upholds the Government’s [C]om-
2. Rationales for Doctrine
a. Mutuality
A primary ground for applying the fugitive disentitlement doctrine is the absence of “mutuality,” which occurs when a decision in favor of an applicant would benefit him, but a decision against him would not be enforceable or would not operate to his disadvantage. See, e.g., In re Hijazi,
The Government contends that “if the Court decides against [Mr.] Darin, the decision will not be enforceable: [Mr.] Darin will not submit to the Court’s jurisdiction if the Court denies his motion on the merits.” (Gov’t Memo, at 36). I assume that the factual statement is correct; Mr. Darin seems to ratify it. (Baird 12/3/14 Decl., ¶ 7). I disagree, however, with the legal premise. The effect of a decision upholding the validity of the complaint will be to allow the charges, and the arrest warrant issued pursuant to those charges, to stand. That decision, like the arrest warrant, is enforceable even in Mr. Darin’s absence.
Moreover, affirming the validity of the complaint will entail significant burdens for Mr. Darin. In In re Hijazi, a case with remarkably similar relevant facts, the court found “adverse consequences” sufficient to establish mutuality. These consequences included restrictions on travel imposed by the indictment — the petitioner was effectively forced to stay in Kuwait or hazard apprehension and extradition — and the risk that, if a federal court upheld the indictment, Kuwait might exercise its discretion to cooperate with the United States and extradite him.
b.Flouting the Judicial Process
According to the Government, Mr. Darin “is ‘flouting the judicial process’ by refusing to appear in this Court.” (Gov’t Memo, at 36). That argument is unpersuasive in part because every fugitive has refused to appear in court — it is the sine qua non of fugitive status. If mere absence from court constituted “flouting the judicial process,” this factor would always favor the prosecution, and no further analysis would be necessary. The Government has not explained what constitutes “flouting” in Mr. Darin’s circumstances in particular. The record does not show, for example, that Mr. Darin fled from the United States after learning he had been or was to be charged; as far as I can tell, there is no indication here that he ever set foot in this jurisdiction. He is avoiding the arrest warrant — a document that does not compel his voluntary surrender — merely by remaining in his home country.
c.Discouraging Flights from Justice
The Government worries that “ruling on [this] motion would encourage others in [Mr.] Darin’s position — including potentially other defendants in LIBOR-related cases residing abroad — to take flight from justice.” (Gov’t Memo, at 36). This contention suffers from a similar flaw as the previous one in that it would apply to every case in which the fugitive disentitlement doctrine might apply. I cannot see how addressing Mr. Darin’s application, in particular, would make other defendants more likely to engage in conduct similar to his. There is no indication in the papers that other defendants or potential defendants in LIBOR-related cases are similarly situated to Mr. Darin — that is, able to avoid prosecution by residing in home countries that have extradition arrangements with the United States similar to Switzerland’s — so that they might be inspired by his example.
d.Prejudice
The final purpose of the fugitive disen-titlement doctrine is “avoiding prejudice to the other side caused by the defendant’s escape.” Bano,
The fading of witnesses’ memories is a cognizable prejudice to the Government. But the Government itself does not seem particularly keen to move this action forward. Despite its attestations that it “has an interest in prosecuting this case in a timely manner,” the Government has not yet indicted Mr. Darin, which is a precondition to prosecuting a felony. Fed. R.Crim.P. 7(a)(1)(B); (Tr. at 53). In light of the circumstances here, including the other findings discussed above, I will not exercise my discretion to apply the fugitive disentitlement doctrine.
C. Presumption Against Extraterritoriality
Mr. Darin argues that the Complaint against him “should be dismissed because it involves an unauthorized extraterritorial application of the conspiracy and wire fraud statutes.” (Def. Memo. at 17).
1. Legal Standard
The “presumption against extraterritoriality” is a canon of statutory construction that assumes that Congress intends its enactments, whether civil or criminal, to apply only domestically unless it clearly expresses a contrary intention. Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd.,
Morrison provides the Supreme Court’s most recent guidance on the presumption. In that case, the Court addressed whether Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 “provides a cause of action to foreign plaintiffs suing foreign and American defendants for misconduct in connection with securities traded on foreign exchanges.” Morrison,
2. Application to Wire Fraud Statute
The wire fraud statute punishes anyone who,
having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice....
18 U.S.C. § 1343. Mr. Darin has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1349.' That section does not set out separate elements of conspiracy (and, indeed, has been held not to contain an “overt act” requirement, see, e.g., United States v. Huff, No. 12 Cr. 750,
Prior to 1956, the wire fraud statute referred only to interstate communications, punishing those who executed a fraudulent scheme “ ‘by means of interstate wire, radio, or television communications.’ ” Wentz v. United States,
The amendment was prompted by the failed prosecution of an individual who made a fraudulent telephone call from Mexico to the United States and successfully argued that § 1343 did not cover such a foreign communication. See S.Rep. No. 1873, 84th Cong., 2d Sess. 2 (1956). With this case in mind, Congress acted to “close [the] loophole” that limited prosecution to eases in which the fraudulent transmission occurred between two states, and explicitly extended the coverage of § 1343 to foreign communications. See H.R. Rep. No. 2385, 84th Cong., 2d Sess. 1 (1956), reprinted in 1956 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3091, 3092.
United States v. Kim,
A number of courts, in applying the wire fraud statute to frauds in which some of the alleged conduct occurred on foreign soil, have likewise indicated that the statute targets the use of domestic wires. See, e.g., United States v. Trapilo,
Most convincingly, the Second Circuit has recently stated categorically that the wire fraud statute “doe[s] not overcome Morrison’s presumption against extraterritoriality.” European Community v. RJR Nabisco,
3. Application to the Facts
The conclusion that the wire fraud statute has only domestic application is not fatal to the Government’s case against Mr. Darin, however, because the statute is not being applied extraterritorially here. See Vilar,
The allegation that a defendant who is charged with violation of the fraud statute used domestic wires to carry out the fraudulent scheme is “clearly sufficient to sustain jurisdiction.” United States v. Gilboe,
In Pasquantino v. United States,
[the defendants] used U.S. interstate wires to execute a scheme to defraud a foreign sovereign of tax revenue. Their offense was complete the moment they executed the scheme inside the United States.... This domestic element of [the defendants’] conduct is what the Government is punishing in this prosecution.
Id. at 371,
The complaint here alleges use of interstate wires in furtherance of the fraudulent scheme that underlies the charge of conspiracy against Mr. Darin: the co-conspirators purportedly caused the manipulated LIBOR to be published to servers in the United States and used United States wires to memorialize trades affected by that rate. The culpable conduct underlying the substantive count therefore occurred in the United States. The presumption against extraterritoriality is thus irrelevant to both the wire fraud and the conspiracy. See Kim,
D. Nexus
Courts, including the Second Circuit, have held that a court may apply a statute extraterritorially provided that (a) Congress intended its reach to extend beyond the territorial boundaries of the United States and (b) there is a “ ‘sufficient nexus between the defendant and the United States, so that such application would not be arbitrary or fundamentally unfair.’” United States v. Al Kassar,
While it may be correct that courts typically do not engage in an analysis of a defendant’s nexus with the United States where the crime charged is not extraterritorial, this may simply be a function of the nexus being obvious. While the extraterritoriality inquiry addresses the reach of a statute, the nexus analysis considers the validity of the court’s exercise of jurisdiction over the particular defendant. The Fifth Amendment requires all prosecutions to be reasonable and fundamentally fair. See Al Kassar,
The nexus analysis does not get Mr. Darin very far, however, because the Complaint alleges a nexus between him and the United States sufficient to satisfy due process concerns. As the District of Columbia Circuit notes, cases in which even the extraterritorial application of a federal criminal statute has been “actually deemed a due process violation” are exceedingly rare, and a defendant’s burden “is a heavy one.” United States v. Ali,
Mr. Darin contends that the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process is not satisfied because the “aim of [his] activity [was not] to cause harm inside the
Second, Mr. Darin contends that the Court must evaluate the Complaint’s allegations regarding his connections to the United States isolated from the allegations regarding Mr. Hayes or the conspiracy as a whole. (Def. Memo, at 5). I disagree.
Relying on the theory of aiding and abetting does not vitiate the need to consider the underlying bases for jurisdiction. In [United States v.] Klimavicius-Viloria, [144 F.3d 1249 (9th Cir.1998),] we noted that criminal liability under the MDLEA could be predicated on an aider-and-abettor theory, but we conducted a nexus analysis nevertheless. See Klimavicius-Viloria,144 F.3d at 1257 . Aiding and abetting is a substantive area of criminal law that allows courts to punish vicariously a defendant who, in some way, associates himself with an illegal venture, participates in it as in something he wishes to bring about, and seeks by his actions to make it succeed. Id. at 1263 (citing Nye & Nissen v. United States,336 U.S. 613 , 619,69 S.Ct. 766 ,93 L.Ed. 919 (1949)). The ability of a United States court to exercise jurisdiction over that particular defendant, however, is a preliminary determination totally distinct from the crime itself and must be considered before any United States court or jury may determine whether the defendant acted as a principal or an aider and abettor. See id. at 1257.
Perlaza,
The defendant overreads this passage as stating a rule that, when analyzing whether the exercise of jurisdiction over a criminal defendant charged with conspiracy comports with due process, only facts alleged as to the specific defendant at issue (but not as to the conspiracy as a whole) can be taken into account. However, in the context of the case, the Ninth Circuit merely required a nexus analysis for each defendant. Imputing jurisdiction for an aider-and-abetter or co-conspirator based only on a jurisdictional decision made for a principal — particularly one made without an evaluation of whether those facts were adequate to confer jurisdiction over the principals — is insufficient. Mr. Darin points to the (rather gnomic) last sentence in the citation above, which states that the question of jurisdiction over a criminal defendant is “preliminary” to and “totally distinct from” the crime itself. But the court cannot have meant that the facts of the charged crime are not to be considered in deciding the jurisdictional question: the facts of the crime, as set out in the statute and as alleged, guide the nexus analysis (especially at this early stage, where the only facts to be evaluated are those in the Complaint). Perhaps most damaging to the defendant’s theory is that fact that in Klimavicius-Viloria, the case Perlaza cites as support for this proposition, there is no indication that each conspirator’s conduct was evaluated in isolation from the actions of others. Indeed, it appears to analyze the alleged conspirators’ contacts as a group. See Klimavicius-Viloria,
Other cases confirm this point. In Ford v.' United States, the defendants were charged with conspiracy to violate federal law “by introducing into and transporting in the United States intoxicating liquor,” but they argued that “they were corporeally at all times during the alleged conspiracy out of the jurisdiction of the United States, and so could commit no offense against it.”
E. Notice
Finally, Mr. Darin contends that he did not have fair notice that his conduct could subject him to criminal liability. Holding an accused criminally responsible for conduct he could not reasonably know was illegal violates the Fifth Amendment. Al Kassar,
Mr. Darin argues that his Yen LIBOR submissions were “opinions in response to a hypothetical question, not representations of fact or even statements of opinion about a concrete fact.” (Def. Memo. at 15). But the Complaint alleges that Mr. Darin submitted opinions that were not bona fide: he worried to Mr. Hayes, for example, that his submission could not stray too far from the “truth” — that is, an “unbiased” and legitimate opinion of the appropriate interest rate.
Conclusion
For these reasons, defendant Roger Darin’s motion to dismiss the Complaint (Docket no. 6) is denied.
SO ORDERED.
Notes
. The Government represented in its papers and at oral argument that Mr. Darin himself also traded Yen LIBOR swaps with counter-parties in the United States and that the alleged manipulation impacted these trades. (Opposition to Defendant Roger Darin's Motion to Dismiss the Criminal Complaint ("Gov’t Memo.”) at 6 n. 4, 23 n. 16; Transcript of Oral Argument dated Jan. 12, 2015 ("Tr.”) at 43). However, I am evaluating the sufficiency of the Complaint, which does not include any such allegations.
. It is worth noting that an arrest warrant— unlike a judgment of conviction, for example — imposes no duty on a defendant; it creates a duty in an “authorized officer” to arrest the accused. (Warrant for Arrest of Roger Darin dated Dec. 12, 2012).
. Gilboe, as well as other cited cases, discusses the question of whether a statute is applied extraterritorially in terms of the court's jurisdiction. Morrison held that the issue of extraterritoriality was not one of jurisdiction, but of statutory interpretation.
. Mr. Darin analogizes to the law of personal jurisdiction developed in civil cases, but it is not relevant. To be sure, “greater due process protection is required in the criminal context than in the civil context” (Reply at 12 (internal quotation marks omitted)), but criminal law and civil law serve different purposes and have different sources and constraints. Positing that doctrines of personal jurisdiction in civil cases should serve as a foundation for the question presented here is attractive, but ultimately inappropriate. See Ali,
. Because I have found that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment is satisfied by this nexus I need not address the defendant’s arguments about international law or comity. Ali,
. Indeed, Mr. Darin knew that such manipulation was improper, as he fretted that being found out might get UBS banned from the Yen LIBOR panel. (Complaint, 1121(d)(ii)). Mr. Darin suggests that this statement supports his position that he had no idea that such manipulation was illegal, because if he had, he would have been more concerned about possible prosecution than about UBS’ position on the Yen LIBOR panel (Def. Memo, at 16; Tr. at 27). This argument is unconvincing. There are any number of reasons why Mr. Darin would refrain from calling attention to possible criminal liability in a conversation with his alleged co-conspirator.
. Mr. Hayes is also being prosecuted in the United Kingdom for his role in this scheme. The Government notes that the court in that
. The fact that the European Commission moved to "clearly prohibit” benchmark manipulation in 2012, see European Commission Press Release, "LIBOR scandal: Commission proposes EU-wide action to fight rate-fixing,” available at http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-846_en.htm (last visited March 2, 2015), does not indicate, as the defendant would have it, that LIBOR manipulation did not constitute fraud under previously-enacted laws in the United States, United Kingdom, or elsewhere.
. The Clerk of Court is respectfully directed to close as moot the Government's motion for leave to file excess pages (Docket no. 22).
