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The Globalization of Investigations

By Benjamin Goldberger and Michael Kendall
June 26, 2007
Over the last several years, the Department of Justice ('DOJ') has expanded its tools and efforts to gather evidence from abroad and reciprocate by helping foreign prosecutors gather evidence in the United States.

For clients whose primary presence is in the United States, including
e-commerce businesses, cross-border cooperation among law-enforcement organizations raises distinct and difficult issues. An effective defense requires knowledge of treaties and criminal law in two or more jurisdictions and collaboration among defense counsel in different countries.

Although some law-enforcement agencies cooperate with each other informally, more significant are agreements made between or among countries. Some agreements are memoranda of understanding ' bilateral agreements between the U.S. executive branch and a foreign sovereign. Others are treaties that are the 'law of the land' equal to Acts of Congress. Besides extradition treaties, law-enforcement agencies cooperate pursuant to tax, customs and, most important, mutual legal-assistance treaties ('MLATs').

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