Rolbiecka-Platta v Poland: High Court dismisses extradition appeal and upholds fugitive finding

The Administrative Court has dismissed an appeal against extradition to Poland, upholding a district judge's finding that a woman who failed to pay court-ordered compensation and did not notify a change of address was a fugitive.

In Rolbiecka-Platta v Regional Court in Poznan [2026] EWHC 1658 (Admin), Mrs Justice Arbuthnot rejected both grounds advanced against the order of District Judge Bristow, who had directed the appellant's surrender to serve two years' imprisonment for nineteen fraud offences committed over three years.

The custodial term had been imposed in November 2017, suspended for five years on condition that the appellant pay compensation of around £6,000. She paid nothing, and the sentence was activated in August 2019. She had signed a document acknowledging her obligation to notify the court of any change of address lasting more than seven days but, on the judge's findings, failed to do so.

The first ground challenged the finding that she was a fugitive. Reviewing the authorities, Arbuthnot J returned to Wisniewski v Poland, in which the Divisional Court held that a person who knowingly exposes himself to the risk that a suspended sentence will be activated cannot later rely on the resulting passage of time. It is not necessary that the individual know the sentence has in fact been activated; knowledge that it is liable to be activated on breach suffices.

She also applied the framework in Makowska v Poland, where Fordham J identified three linked themes of fugitivity: locational dynamism, informational deficit, and intended consequential elusiveness. Each was present. The appellant had moved from Poland to England and then within England; she had not provided her address as required; and her deliberate silence left the Polish authorities unable to deal with her. That distinguished her position from the requested person in the Pillar-Neumann line of cases, who had lived openly and taken no positive step to place herself beyond reach.

The submission that she had lived openly in the United Kingdom, provided addresses and made efforts to pay could not overcome the judge's adverse credibility findings, made after hearing oral evidence and not lightly to be disturbed. Her assumption that contact with a family court during later divorce proceedings would inform the criminal court was rejected, not least because the sentence had already been activated by then.

On Article 8, Arbuthnot J reaffirmed the guidance in Celinski and Andrysiewicz v Poland that the appellate question is whether the decision was wrong, and that cases in which private life defeats extradition are rare, generally requiring an exceptionally severe impact. The offending was serious, involving repeated dishonesty and identity theft, and the initial suspension did not lessen its gravity. The interference with the appellant's established private life fell well short of the threshold.

Reliance on a curfew exceeding 660 days did not shift the balance. Drawing on Begum and Dedza, the court noted that time on a tagged curfew rarely carries decisive weight unless a case is otherwise finely balanced, and that the restriction is qualitatively different from imprisonment. Accounts of domestic abuse and expert evidence of depression and anxiety had been treated with caution on credibility grounds, and even taken at their highest did not render surrender disproportionate, there being no basis to conclude that adequate care was unavailable in Polish prisons.

Significantly, the district judge had reached the same proportionality conclusion even assuming the appellant was not a fugitive and accepting the medical evidence in full. That comprehensive evaluation, not dependent on any single factor, was unimpeachable, and the appeal was dismissed.