Cisco slammed over former exec's arrest

A Canadian supreme court judge has blocked the extradition to the US of a former Cisco employee who faced a possible 500 year sentence for alleged hacking crimes.  

British citizen Peter Adekeye avoided extradition to the US after Justice Ronald McKinnon found that US authorities and Cisco had deceived Canadian courts in order to have him jailed over a minor civil dispute.

Justice McKinnon compared Adekeye's ordeal to something out of Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22, according to The Vancouver Sun. 

Adekeye was arrested by Canadian Mounted Police in May 2010 while giving a deposition to Cisco’s lawyers for a civil suit launched by one of his companies, Multiven.

Adekeye's company had accused Cisco of monopolistiic behaviour in relation to its SMARTnet support service, but the litigation was moved to Canada because Adekeye had been denied entry into the US.

Cisco had sought to avoid that civil suit by successfully convincing Canadian authorities to arrest Adekeye, Jusice McKinnon said.

Adekeye had faced 97 charges related to computer crimes and was arrested after US authorities convinced Canadian courts he was a flight risk. Cisco had accused its former employee of stealing computer code worth more than US$14,000 in a civil countersuit to his 2008 claim. 

“This speaks volumes for Cisco’s duplicity,” Justice McKinnon was quoted by the Sun, "It is simply not done in a civilized jurisdiction that is bound by the rule of law.".