Abu Dhabi: Five people have been extradited under the treaty between the United Kingdom and the UAE which came into force five years ago, a senior UK official told Gulf News.

The Prisoner Transfer Agreement signed by both nations this year is also an important step in bilateral relations, said Alistair Burt, Parliamentary Undersecretary for the State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said.

He was in Abu Dhabi last week to co-chair the tenth meeting of the UK-UAE Taskforce along with Dr Anwar Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Federal National Council Affairs.

The extradition treaty between the UK and the UAE came into force on April 2, 2008.

Both nations have agreed to extradite any person sought by a country’s authorities for trial or punishment for offences in accordance with the provisions of the treaty. Extradition is granted if the offences are those that attract at least one year in jail or a more severe penalty under the laws of both nations.

Of the five people extradited by both nations since the treaty came into effect in 2008, four were extradited by the UK and one by the UAE, an official spokesperson of the British Embassy in Abu Dhabi told Gulf News.

“They were of a mixture of nationalities,” the spokesperson said without revealing details of individual cases of those extradited by the UK to the UAE. But she said, the only one extradited by the UAE was from Dubai and was involved in a high-profile money laundering case in Britain.

He was James Ibori, a former governor of a Nigerian oil state, who was sentenced to 13 years in jail in the UK in April 2012 for embezzling £50 million (Dh278 million) in one of Britain’s biggest money-laundering cases.

A UAE Federal Government Official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of the four people extradited by the UK to the UAE, one was already convicted by a UAE court for a criminal offence.

The other three cases were under investigation, he said, without giving further details.

The embassy spokesperson said a UK liaison prosecutor had been stationed at the British Embassies in Abu Dhabi and Dubai since 2011.

He liaises with the judicial systems of the UAE and the UK to facilitate legal cooperation between the two countries.

Regarding the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) that was signed this year, she said no one has been transferred yet under the agreement.

There is no information available on the number of UK citizens in UAE prisons and the number of UAE citizens in UK prisons.

— With inputs from Abdulla Rasheed, Abu Dhabi Editor.