Cybercrime Prosecution in Cross-Border Jurisdictions: Legal Challenges and Paths to Harmonization

The global rise of cybercrime presents unprecedented challenges to national legal systems, particularly where offences transcend territorial boundaries. Cybercriminals commonly take advantage of fragmented jurisdictional frameworks, disparate legal standards, and cumbersome mutual legal assistance procedures, all of which hamper effective prosecution. This paper analyses the legal and procedural challenges involved in prosecuting transnational cybercrime, with Bangladesh as its primary jurisdiction of focus. Through a doctrinal and comparative legal analysis, the study examines substantive and procedural cybercrime laws in Bangladesh as well as in selected jurisdictions such as the United States and the European Union, while also assessing international mechanisms including Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) and the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. The findings reveal significant discrepancies among jurisdictions in cybercrime definitions, jurisdictional rules, standards for digital evidence, and procedures for accessing data stored abroad, which together constitute institutional barriers to effective law enforcement. Comparative analysis further demonstrates that the United States and the European Union have developed sophisticated and convergent frameworks such as the CLOUD Act, the European Investigation Order (EIO), and emerging e-Evidence mechanisms to facilitate expedited cross-border data access and coordinated prosecution. By contrast, Bangladesh continues to face substantial techno-legislative constraints, limited treaty networks, and outdated procedural mechanisms, resulting in investigative delays and prosecutorial inefficiencies. The study proposes a harmonization-oriented model emphasizing unified cybercrime definitions, streamlined MLAT procedures, reforms in digital evidence law, institutional capacity-building, and accession to key international conventions. It concludes that, without substantive legal harmonization and enhanced international cooperation, Bangladesh and similarly situated developing states will remain vulnerable to transnational cyber threats, thereby undermining national security and global cyber governance.