Central Authority
The designated government body through which all mutual legal assistance requests must pass — and where they frequently wait.
A central authority is the body designated by each state to send, receive, and administer mutual legal assistance (MLA) requests. Every state party to an MLA treaty or convention is required to nominate one. In practice, this is typically a ministry of justice, attorney-general’s department, or equivalent executive body.
The central authority is the mandatory routing point for all formal MLA. A request sent directly to a foreign court, prosecutor, or police agency — bypassing the central authority — has no formal legal standing and cannot compel any response. Every request must enter the system at this point.
Central authorities exercise significant discretion. They determine whether a request meets the formal requirements of the relevant treaty, assign it a priority within their workload, decide whether to seek clarification before transmitting it, and — in some jurisdictions — make an initial assessment of dual criminality and proportionality before the request proceeds further. No treaty prescribes how long any of these steps should take.
In grand corruption cases, where the target may have connections to the government of the requested state, the central authority is the point at which legitimate administrative process and deliberate delay become structurally indistinguishable.
Definition drawn from UNODC MLA Writer's Guide and Basel Institute on Governance MLA resources.