United States v. Sealed 1, Letter of Request for Legal Assistance from the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation

ORDER

The opinion filed November 1, 2000 [ 231 F.3d 484 ], is amended as follows:

The panel has also unanimously voted to deny Appellant’s petition for panel rehearing.

OPINION

The tax man cometh—all the way from Russia. But Appellant asserts that his journey was not authorized by,U.S. law, specifically 28 U.S.C. § 1782 , which governs formal assistance to foreign criminal investigations. Appellant, whose identity is confidential and under seal, argues that § 1782 does not permit such assistance until an actual foreign criminal proceeding is “imminent.” We disagree; neither the plain language of the statute nor Ninth Circuit precedent imposes an imminence requirement. We therefore affirm the district court’s denial of Appellant’s motion to dismiss proceedings conducted by the United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington, acting as Commissioner pursuant to § 1782.

DISCUSSION

Because our primary task here involves interpretation of a statute, requiring purely legal analysis, and because the details of this matter are under seal, we do not recite the factual background of the case. Nor is a recitation necessary to our legal discussion except to say that the…