business
Can a person be convicted in their home country A for something that is considered a crime in country B (but not a crime in A)?
<p><strong>Can a person be convicted in their home country A for something that is considered a crime in country B (but not a crime in A)?</strong></p>
<p>Take for example something less extreme like, reputational damage of a company, not something like murder, which international police would deal with.  The action itself is not considered a crime in country A (i.e. not enshired by any law), however, in country B it is. The reputational damage is what would derive from it, and that is a crime in both country A and B, however, the company of country B has no presence in country A.</p>

<p>So one such breech of law in this situation would be a defamation suit (a civil rather than criminal matter) which, especially in Common Law nations, are usually heard in the court of the plaintiff's jurisdiction as the most severe damage to reputation would be local.  However, as this is not a crime (usually, there are some rarely used defamation crime statutes in the U.S. at least) the actual defendant may not need to actually sit in court during the trial and making appearances through lawyers only is not an indicator of guilt.</p>
<p>In defimation specific cases, the U.S. will refuse to enforce any payment to a victorious plaintiff unless the defamation case could be upheld in U.S. law (the U.S. has some rather high burdens of proof in defimation that other nations (including Canada and England, which are very close in legal system's structures) and as such, a ruling of guilt in an English court might be innocence in the U.S.   This would only go to enforcing orders on relief as it pertains to the U.S. and corporations in the U.S. (if the guilty defendant has all his money American Banks, then the U.S. won't compel the banks to hand over assests from his accounts... However, they can't do anything about English courts seizing that man's Scottish real estate to sell for the damages.</p>
<p>With respect to criminal matters, it largely depends on the nature of the extradition treaty between Nations A and B.  Typically, where those treaties exist, Nation A will only extradite the accused for crimes that Nation A and B both agree are crimes and both agree that similar punishments will be given if convicted.   Additionally, they typically agree to only try the accused for crimes Nation A is extraditing the accused for.   The punishment angle can be overcome during the negotiating between nations (One common example is that the U.S. and Canada do have an extradition treaty, Canada will refuse to extradite someone for a capital offense because they abolished the death penalty.  However, because Canada has an interest in not being a haven for U.S. murders, they will often compromise with the prosecutor in charge of the case and extradite with the promise that the prosecutor will not seek death penalty.   Just to show it isn't just the U.S. on the losing side, there was an actual case where a U.S. citizen was arrested in Italy for murder, was tried and aquitted.  Upon her release, she returned to the U.S. only for Italian officials to learn of another witness and begin petitioning for a second trial.   The U.S. refused to extradite, citing the constitutional protection against double jeopardy i.e. a second trial on the same event).</p>
<p>Other nations, like Germany and Russia, have laws that bar the country from extraditing citizens.  These protections aren't granted to resident aliens or tourists, visa holders, or illegal immigrants, so any treaties with them may have the other nation stipulate the same restriction despite it not being a law in that nation.</p>
<p>Should Nations A and B not have extradition treaty, Nation B can ask really really politely, but at the end of the day, Nation A isn't bound to honor the request... but they aren't bound to refuse it either.   Some nations might honor the request to curry favor with Nation B... while others might refuse because of a host of matters.  Often nations without extradition treaties aren't the friendliest to each other, so they could refuse out of spite... but will play their refusal on a moral ground.</p>
<p>If in the above situation, the accused leaves Nation A for Nation C, Nation B can request C to affect the extradition (They might invoke if they have an extradition treaty with C).  A will have little recourse to stop this other than court favor with C.</p>
