ANTIGUA'S RESTRAINING ORDER ON LEROY KING VIOLATES ENGLISH COMMON LAW AND ECSC RULES

Privy Council: no jurisdiction here, Mr. King

If you were disturbed by the recent ruling of a judge in Antigua's High Court, preventing the extradition of Leroy King, the co-defendant of mega-Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford, to the US, to face a life sentence, you are not alone. The Court ruling, that King's request for a ruling as to whether he has a right of appeal to the Privy Council, from his adverse ruling at the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, was sufficient to stay his extradition, was not only error, it violates both ECSC rules and English Common Law.

To be more precise: King has NO right of appeal to the Privy Council, because his case to the ECSC was an appeal. The ECSC was acting as a court of last resort, and appeals to the Privy Council do not lie from ECSC rulings, when it acts as a Court of Appeal. You do not get more than one right of appeal; only one bite of the apple, so to speak; That's English Common Law.

The actions of the Antiguan judiciary, allowing one bogus appeal after another to be filed, for years, to keep Leroy King from telling US authorities what he knows about who in Antigua received those millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks from Stanford, speaks volumes about the rampant corruption that poisons the country. Foreign investors, steer clear, for if you later have a bona fide grievance, the courts of Antigua are infected.