7.1 Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA)

The concept: the states' cooperation in the evidence's gathering-and-production: the foreign- requested evidence for the domestic trial; the domestic evidence for the foreign trial. Theassistance's forms: the witness examination-and-transfer (the hearing abroad; the witness's voluntary attendance); the document's production (the records, the bank's information); the search-and-seizure's execution (the requested state's compulsion); the service of process; the freezing-and-forfeiture's cooperation (the proceeds' faces). The principles: the dual criminality (the offence's recognition both sides — the requests' filter); the reciprocity-and-treaty basis; the refusal's grounds (the sovereignty, the security, the political offence, the human-rights bars); the requested state's procedure (the lex loci of the execution).