Legal resources
Legal Comparisons
Comparisons built from what has already been explained separately on our Areas of Practice and Offences pages, for those who need to precisely distinguish between closely related legal concepts before deciding how to act.
Classic Extradition versus the European Arrest Warrant
When the requested person is located within the European Union, the classic extradition procedure gives way to the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), a more streamlined mechanism based on mutual recognition between judicial authorities.
| Criterion | Classic extradition (Law 4/1985) | European Arrest Warrant (EAW) |
|---|---|---|
| Legal framework | Law 4/1985 on Passive Extradition, together with the applicable bilateral or multilateral treaties (e.g. the 1957 European Convention on Extradition). | Council Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA and Law 23/2014, of 20 November. |
| Governing principle | Cooperation between sovereign States, with government involvement. | Mutual recognition between the judicial authorities of the Member States. |
| Who decides on surrender | Judicial review of legality by the Audiencia Nacional (Spain's National Court, with jurisdiction over serious cross-border and organised crime), followed by a final decision of the Council of Ministers, which may refuse surrender on grounds of sovereignty, security, public order or reciprocity even where the court has declared it appropriate (it can never grant surrender if the court has refused it). | The decision rests exclusively with the judicial authority, with no final government involvement. |
| Length of the procedure | A succession of stages each with its own deadlines: 24 hours to bring the person before the court, 72 hours for the personal-situation hearing, 40 days for the formal extradition request, 8+15 days for the government stage, up to 80 days of maximum pre-trial detention, up to 30 days of investigation if there is opposition, and 3 days for the ruling after the hearing. | Considerably shorter processing than classic extradition. |
| Grounds for refusal | Broader: the mandatory and discretionary grounds set out in articles 3 to 5 of Law 4/1985 (Spanish nationality, political offence, res judicata, statute of limitations, minimum penalty threshold, among others). | Narrower, although it keeps the essential safeguards of the requested person fully intact. |
Misappropriation, fraud and unfair administration
All three offences protect another person's property, but they differ in the moment and form of the attack: the origin of possession of the asset, whether or not there was prior deception, and whether the loss of property is final or not.
| Criterion | Misappropriation (art. 253 CP) | Fraud (art. 248 CP) | Unfair administration (art. 252 CP) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Origin of possession of the asset | Lawful: the perpetrator receives the asset under deposit, commission, administration or another title that obliges them to hand it over or return it, with no deception involved. | Tainted from the outset: the very handing over of the asset is a consequence of the deception ( dolo antecedente, deceptive intent formed before and inducing the victim's disposal of the asset). | Lawful: the perpetrator holds powers of administration over another person's property, conferred by law, by the authority or by a legal transaction. |
| Moment the offence arises | When the possessor incorporates the asset into their own property or gives it a final purpose different from the one agreed, exceeding the powers granted by the title under which it was received. | Already at the moment of the handover, brought about by the sufficient deception that caused the victim's error. | When the administrator exceeds the powers conferred, causing an assessable economic loss with a direct causal link, without requiring a specific intent to profit. |
| Does it require a final loss of property? | Yes, with respect to the specific asset: the "point of no return" doctrine when the object is money or another fungible item. | Yes, actual financial loss is an element of the offence. | Not necessarily: it penalises the abuse of management powers, even where no irrecoverable loss of specific assets occurs. |
| Boundary between them | Distinguished from unfair administration by the final nature of the loss of specific assets. | Distinguished from misappropriation by the absence, in the latter, of any prior deception. | Distinguished from misappropriation by not requiring the irreversible expropriation of specific assets. |
Handling stolen goods, money laundering and concealment
All three offences punish someone who, without having taken part in another person's offence, later acts in relation to its effects. They differ in the type of prior offence they admit, in whether they seek personal profit or to disguise the origin of the assets, and in the legal interest they protect.
| Criterion | Handling stolen goods (art. 298 CP) | Money laundering (arts. 301-304 CP) | Concealment (art. 451 CP) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal interest protected | Property and the socioeconomic order. | The socioeconomic order and the integrity of the financial system. | The administration of justice. |
| Prior offence admitted | Must be an offence against property or the socioeconomic order (an essential requirement distinguishing it from money laundering). | Admits any predicate offence, not only offences against property. | Any offence, with no restriction as to its nature. |
| Purpose of the conduct | Intent to profit personally: personal benefit from the effects of the offence, or helping those responsible to benefit from them. | Disguising the unlawful origin of the assets so as to bring them back into the legal economy with an appearance of lawfulness. | In its main form (art. 451.1º CP), helping those responsible to benefit from the proceeds of the offence without seeking personal profit; it also covers concealing the effects or instruments of the offence, or helping to evade investigation. |
| Penalty ceiling | May not exceed the penalty set by law for the offence being concealed itself (art. 298.3 CP). | Autonomous penalty, of up to 6 years under the aggravated form linked to drug trafficking or other serious offences. | Imprisonment of six months to three years; a statutory exemption exists for close relatives (art. 454 CP), except in the form involving profiting from the proceeds of the offence. |
Criminal organisation versus criminal group and joint participation
The law distinguishes three levels of plural participation in an offence, with very different penological consequences: the criminal organisation, the criminal group and simple joint participation (several people jointly committing a single criminal act).
| Criterion | Criminal organisation (art. 570 bis CP) | Criminal group (art. 570 ter CP) | Joint participation (no aggravation) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stability and structure | Requires temporal stability, a division of roles and coordination among its members, with a degree of hierarchy. | A residual figure carrying a lesser penalty: it does not require the same stability or hierarchical structure as the organisation, although it does require a degree of coordination among its members. | Requires neither structure nor stability: several people agree to commit a single criminal act. |
| Intention to carry out multiple operations | Requires an intention to carry out not a single course of criminal conduct but several separate and distinct criminal operations. | Does not necessarily require that same intention to carry out multiple operations in the same terms as the organisation. | Not present: limited to the joint planning and division of roles for a single offence. |
| Application in drug trafficking | Where it is present in drug trafficking, art. 369 bis CP (the specific drug-trafficking organisation offence) absorbs and displaces the generic art. 570 bis CP, unless other criminal activities unrelated to drug trafficking are also present. | May be found alongside the basic drug-trafficking offence when the requirements for an organisation are not met. | Does not give rise to any specific aggravation for organisation or group. |
Interpol red notice versus diffusion
Both are Interpol mechanisms for requesting the location and arrest of a wanted person, but they differ in the procedure for issuing them and the prior review they undergo.
| Criterion | Red notice | Diffusion |
|---|---|---|
| Who issues it | Interpol's General Secretariat, at the request of the National Central Bureau of the requesting member country. | Directly the National Central Bureau of the requesting country. |
| Prior review | Subject to a prior compliance review carried out by Interpol's own General Secretariat before publication. | Without that prior compliance review: a faster mechanism, but with less centralised control. |
| Route of challenge | Request for access to, rectification or deletion of data, or urgent provisional measures, before the Commission for the Control of Interpol's Files (CCF), with time limits of between 4 and 9 months for ordinary requests. | Same route before the Commission for the Control of Interpol's Files (CCF). |
Based on:
Interpol Red Notices →