Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties

A mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) is an agreement between countries to share information and provide assistance to one another in the enforcement of criminal laws. These treaties, which are generally bilateral in scope, aim to increase the effectiveness of transnational law-enforcement efforts by improving cooperation and offering more efficient allocation of investigative and prosecutorial resources. Such treaties often contain extradition agreements that require the country in which a criminal suspect is located to deliver that suspect to the prosecuting authority of the country seeking to prosecute him or her, subject to certain conditions. MLATs can confer on a requesting country the power to compel the production of documentary evidence such as tax information or financial records, the power to summon witnesses, the power to ...