Extradition costs cover

Extradition costs cover is a D&O (directors and officers) extension that pays the lawyers' fees and representation costs of an executive facing an extradition request. July 2006: three former Greenwich NatWest bankers, David Bermingham, Giles Darby and Gary Mulgrew, are handed over to the United States under the Extradition Act 2003, charged with wire fraud in the Enron affair. The "NatWest Three" had exhausted their British appeals before leaving; they pleaded guilty in Houston in late 2007. By the summer of 2006, London brokers and insurers were debating the point, and endorsements appeared that named extradition proceedings expressly. Extradition proceedings sit in an awkward place: they do not try the misconduct, they only decide whether the person will be surrendered, and many claim definitions did not catch them. The extension was written for that gap. It covers lawyers' fees to contest the request or negotiate its terms, appeals up to the higher courts, sometimes bail, travel costs, a crisis communications adviser. It almost always sits under a sublimit, inside the policy limit, and it does not outlive the conduct exclusion once the fault is established by a final decision. The case is rare in an underwriter's files. It still weighs heavily when reading a risk where executives deal with American counterparties or fall under extraterritorial jurisdiction, sanctions and anti-bribery first among them, which is how political risk gets into a directors' policy.