Australian prosecutors’ diligence questioned in San Francisco extradition hearing for Vietnam boxing chief accused of drug trafficking

January 29, 2026

Australian prosecutors’ diligence was at issue in a federal courtroom in San Francisco today as their U.S. counterparts argued that the president of the Vietnam Boxing Federation should be sent Down Under to face drug trafficking charges.

Bao Luu was arrested last year in connection with a since-dismissed allegation of kidnapping and torture in Santa Clara County after traveling to the United States to attend a family funeral.

At an extradition hearing this morning Luu’s attorney, Lawrence Schoenbach, complained that, as more than eight years have elapsed between the 2017 seizure of drugs in Melbourne and his client being charged, his prosecution was “unreasonably delayed” by Australia and his extradition barred.

“What did Australia do?” Luu’s attorney Lawrence Schoenbach asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson.

“Were they diligent in any way in seeking the defendant’s arrest?”

“From 2019…to 2025 Australia did nothing. Something so trivial, so easy as an email to Interpol. Nothing. They didn’t seek his extradition. They didn’t seek it from Vietnam, claiming in their affidavit Vietnam doesn’t extradite its citizens. That’s false.”

In a motion filed ahead of the hearing, Schoenbach observed that, since 2017, records have been lost or destroyed and some witnesses will have become unavailable and others’ memories will have faded. This put defense attorneys at a significant disadvantage vis-à-vis prosecutors.

The court heard argument at length as to whether ‘lapse of time’ provisions in the U.S.-Australia extradition treaty – clauses that can bar extraditions if too much time has passed since the alleged offense – referred exclusively to whether any statute of limitations had expired in Australia.

“[The Government] talk about lapse of time meaning ‘statute of limitations’ and that’s a fallacy,” said Shoenbach. “In this case and on these facts, because there is no statute of limitations in Australia. It does not exist. It’s not that it doesn’t exist for this crime, it doesn’t exist for any crime.”

“He traveled on 180 separate occasions across an international border,” Schoenbach added, saying that his client could have been nabbed at any time.

“For want of literally pushing a button, which says ‘put this man’s name on a red list’, which says ‘if this man crosses a border he will be arrested’…all of these places had treaties with the Government of Australia.”

Schoenbach dismissed prosecutors’ suggestions that they were reluctant to put Luu’s name on any Interpol list lest news of the development reach him.

“To suggest that, what, 30 countries are in cahoots? Why not put him on the red list? It’s easy, it’s standard, it’s normal and it goes to undue delay. Luu doesn’t know that there’s a warrant for his arrest, maybe he guesses I don’t know…[but] it’s the first case in 40 years that I have seen someone not put on an Interpol red list.”

Schoenbach rejected suggestions from U.S. prosecutors that his dual-national client was using passports from both the U.S. and Vietnam strategically to avoid coming to authorities’ attention.

“I don’t know any dual national who doesn’t do the same thing”, he said.

“It’s easier. It’s ease not complicity or some secret effort to evade tracking…once you cross that border U.S. customs knows you’re here.”

For the Government, assistant U.S. attorney Maureen Bessette dismissed Luu’s claim that there was intentional coordination between the United States and Australia to delay his Australian trial and impair his defense.

“Because of the way he travels with multiple passports and multiple legs,” it was difficult for authorities to have full visibility of where he was, she said.

“He uses his Vietnamese passport to go from one location in Asia to go to Hawaii, and then his U.S. passport to travel within the U.S.”

As Australian officials realized he was in the U.S., they moved rapidly to correct typographical errors in charging documents and have them refiled, she said, and there was no unreasonable delay.

In any event, Bessette added, it didn’t matter because the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Australia was clear: both nations agreed that the ‘lapse of time’ provision, which might bar extradition if too much time had passed, referred exclusively to whether any statute of limitations for the charged offenses had expired in Australia, which was not the case here.

She said that all of the factors the court had to consider to certify the extradition has been met.

In 2016, the court was earlier told, one of Luu’s alleged accomplices, Van Hieu Le, failed in a bid to import cocaine into Australia.

He was working with two accomplices, whom he believed to be corrupt dock workers able to steer drugs around customs officials unnoticed, but who were in fact undercover Australian federal police officers. His plans failed almost immediately, however, when other – legitimately corrupt – dock workers swiped the entire 100kg cocaine haul before it had left Panama.

Undeterred by the fiasco, prosecutors say Le promptly brought Luu on board to professionalize the operation.

Luu met with the undercover cops in a steam room in Saigon in September and November 2016. According to prosecutors, Luu told them that his contacts at Colombian ports were “top level, had full control and could arrange anything they wanted”.

This, say Australian authorities, ultimately resulted in Luu conspiring with others to ship 78kg of cocaine from South America to Melbourne aboard the MV Spirit of Shanghai – a UK-flagged container ship which arrived in the city’s port on June 26 2017.

Other conspirators are already in jail after being convicted in Australia.

Since Luu’s arrest, the affairs of the Vietnam Boxing Federation have been looked after by vice president Nguyen Duy Hung.

Reports suggest that Luu called Duy Hung, from jail, on August 3 2025.

Today’s hour-long hearing was held in a packed courtroom of some 35 supporters of Luu. The defendant, wearing a jail-issued orange sweater and sporting a pair of black glasses, did not speak.

Judge Hixson said he would issue a written ruling in due course.

UPDATE: Hixson has issued an order certifying the extradition, stayed briefly to allow Luu to bring the matter before a district judge via a habeas corpus petition. Should that not meet with success, the final decision on whether or not to extradite Luu will then rest with the Secretary of State.