Study On Mutual Legal Assistance In Transnational Counterfeit Drug Crimes

Transnational counterfeit drug crimes are so harmful and highly internationalized that one country alone cannot completely strike this crime,so it is necessary to use the means of mutual legal assistance to pool the resources of all countries involved in the case.The purpose of this paper is to analyze the problems of mutual legal assistance for combating transnational counterfeit drug crimes and provide countermeasures,so as to broaden the research horizon,improve the relevant system,protect people’s health and maintain the national drug management regulation in China.The body of this paper is divided into four parts as follows:The first part is the basic theory and overview of transnational counterfeit drug crime and mutual legal assistance.Firstly,it clarifies the definition of transnational counterfeit drug crime in this paper,and analyzes its crime characteristics,which includes multiple countries involved,multiple legal interests infringed,criminal means hidden and professional,and the existence of upstream and downstream criminal chains.After that,the concept,principles and specific work of the mutual legal assistance system are briefly introduced.Finally,it introduces the overview of mutual legal assistance conducted by the international community and China to combat transnational counterfeit drug crimes.The second part compares the existing international legal basis of mutual legal assistance against transnational counterfeit drug crimes in the world,which includes multilateral treaties,bilateral treaties and national legislation.Then it proposes that the existing legal basis suffers from the lack of international conventions,the lack of unified domestic and foreign legislation and the limited scope of application of multilateral treaties.The causes for these problems are the priority of national interests over the mutual benefits with international community,and the differences in the cognition of legal concepts and the legal culture among countries.The third part,by studying five specific kinds of international cooperation activities in mutual legal assistance,concludes that there are several problems,such as low timeliness of the assistance requesting procedure,conflicts in jurisdiction determining,controversial ways of evidence investigating and collecting,strict restrictions on extradition,and low willingness of countries to assist in recovering stolen assets.These problems are caused by the lack of in-depth cooperation between countries,the inefficiency of law enforcement and judiciary system in some countries,and the complexity of the assistance matters themselves.The fourth part,based on the problems and causes summarized above,proposes suggestions to improve China’s mutual legal assistance system for combating transnational counterfeit drug crimes.Firstly,from the perspective of legal basis,strengthen legislation in foreign-related fields,coordinate the differences between domestic and foreign legislation,and actively conclude bilateral treaties and multilateral treaties.Then,from the perspective of national cooperation,coordinate and transfer jurisdiction,innovate investigation and evidence collection modes,adapt extradition restriction conditions,improve asset sharing system and deepen information exchange cooperation.