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Corporate Crime & Compliance UK
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June 26, 2024
Financier Seeks Absolution In Vatican Real Estate Deal Trial
An Italian financier and his companies argued at a London trial Wednesday that the Vatican's allegations that he was involved in an unlawful conspiracy over a London property deal are "incoherent and confused," claiming he acted in good faith throughout the transactions.
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June 26, 2024
Ex-BHS Director Ordered To Pay £50M Over Firm's Collapse
A London judge has ordered a former director of the now-defunct British Home Stores to pay £50 million ($63.2 million) in damages after concluding he had committed trading misfeasance and wrongful trading during the company's high-profile downfall.
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June 26, 2024
FCA Asked To Block Shein IPO Over Forced Labor Concerns
A Uyghur rights group said Wednesday that it has teamed up with Leigh Day to block Shein from floating on the London Stock Exchange over concerns it uses forced labor.
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June 26, 2024
Gas Plant Subcontractor Fights £170M Fraud Suit On Appeal
A gas plant subcontractor relaunched its fight on Wednesday to strike out an engineering company's £170 million ($215 million) claim that it lied about its experience building similar plants ahead of a failed project.
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June 26, 2024
Workers Can Appeal Dyson Forced Labor Case In Malaysia
Migrant workers in Malaysia have won their bid for a second chance to convince the courts that their allegations of forced labor and mistreatment by their employer, ATA Industrial, a large publicly listed Malaysian manufacturer, should be heard in the U.K., the law firm representing them said Wednesday.
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June 26, 2024
Mitie Settles £260M Prison Contract Award Dispute With Gov't
The U.K.'s Ministry of Justice has settled a claim brought by prison services contractor Mitie that accused the government of unlawfully awarding a £260 million ($328 million) prison management contract to its rival.
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June 26, 2024
SDT Should Have Granted Anonymity In Iraqi AML Probe
A London court has ruled that the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal should have granted an anonymity order to protect client privilege amid its probe into a solicitor's dealings with an Iraqi family, but the judge agreed that the lawyer did not breach anti-money laundering regulations.
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June 26, 2024
Aviva Sees 39% Rise In Insurance Fraud Claims
Insurance giant Aviva on Wednesday said it spotted 39% more instances of fraud in 2023 than it did in the year previous, despite the value of fraudulent claims being lower than 2022.
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July 03, 2024
Paul Hastings Adds 12-Lawyer White Collar Team In Paris
Paul Hastings LLP has boosted its capacity to advise clients on white collar cases and legal actions concerning environmental, social and governance matters by hiring a team of 12 lawyers from a specialist litigation and investigations firm in Paris.
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June 25, 2024
Hedge Fund Exec Avoids Prison After Forex-Rigging Trial
The founder of U.K.-based Glen Point Capital on Tuesday was spared prison time following his conviction at trial for unlawfully manipulating the foreign exchange market in order to secure a $20 million payout for the hedge fund.
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June 25, 2024
UK Billionaire's Pilot Avoids Prison For Insider Trading
A Manhattan federal judge sentenced a former private jet pilot to house arrest Tuesday for insider trading on stock tips from his billionaire boss Joe Lewis, finding that a prison term would be unfair in comparison to Lewis' non-incarceratory sentence.
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June 25, 2024
Int'l Paper Gets US Clearance On $7.2B DS Smith Buy
International Paper Co. and its U.K. competitor DS Smith PLC said Tuesday that the waiting period for U.S. antitrust authorities to try and block their planned roughly $7.2 billion merger has expired.
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June 25, 2024
NatWest Faces Fight To Revive Design School Fraud Case
The founders of an interior design school asked an appeals court to revive their fraud claim against NatWest on Tuesday, arguing that a settlement did not block their case that the bank pretended to help while trying to take the school's assets.
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June 25, 2024
Law Firm Faces £35M Suit Over Troubled Care Home Scheme
Liquidators for a now-defunct group of companies have accused a law firm of ignoring the signs that their client was defrauding investors out of millions of pounds through a luxury care home Ponzi scheme.
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June 25, 2024
Assange Plea Deal Vindicates 'Fight To The End' Strategy
Julian Assange's plea deal with U.S. authorities has validated his legal team's decision to throw the kitchen sink opposing extradition, a strategy that may have cooled prosecutors' appetite for seeing the Wikileaks founder spend more time behind bars, lawyers say.
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July 02, 2024
Top White Collar Barrister Jumps Ship To Fountain Court
A top corporate crime barrister has joined Fountain Court Chambers to boost its offering to high-net-worth individuals and corporate defendants in major investigations by the Serious Fraud Office and other authorities, the set has said.
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June 25, 2024
Insurtech Body Calls For Regulatory Shakeup To Fuel Growth
The next government must create a "positive, enabling policy environment" that allows more insurance technology firms to enter the market and facilitates better funding to drive growth in the sector, a trade body said Tuesday.
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June 24, 2024
Julian Assange To Plead Guilty To US Charge, Feds Say
Julian Assange will plead guilty to a single count of conspiring to disclose national security information, the U.S. Department of Justice told a federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands on Monday, likely ending the WikiLeaks founder's long-running battle to avoid a U.S. prison sentence.
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June 24, 2024
Fragrance Co. Fined €15.9M For Deleting WhatsApp Messages
The European Commission fined International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. €15.9 million ($17 million) on Monday, after enforcers said a senior employee deleted WhatsApp messages during an investigation of potential anti-competitive activity in the fragrance industry.
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June 24, 2024
Businessman Sentenced For Disclosure Failings In Fraud Suit
A real estate investor was given a suspended sentence by a London judge Monday for failing to hand over information about his financial assets to investors suing him for alleged fraud, despite a court order.
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June 24, 2024
BHS Asks For £133M In Damages From Former Director
Liquidators for now-defunct retail chain British Home Stores argued Monday that one of the company's former directors owes it £133.5 million ($169.2 million), maintaining that the court should calculate damages from the day he was found to have agreed to a loan that was not in the interests of shareholders and not likely to save the business.
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June 24, 2024
German Banker's Cum-Ex Trial Dropped Due To Health
The former chairman of M.M. Warburg & Co. KGaA will not face trial for alleged dividend-tax evasion linked to cum-ex transactions spanning from 2006 to 2019 after a German court halted the trial due to his health, according to a Monday court statement.
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June 24, 2024
Ex-Chief Of EU Lender Probed Over Corruption Allegations
Werner Hoyer, the former head of the European Union's lending arm, is being investigated by the bloc's public prosecutor over corruption, abuse of influence and misappropriation allegations that he said on Monday were "unfounded and baseless."
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June 24, 2024
Dentons' Inadvertent AML Error Wasn't SRA Misconduct
Dentons' U.K. arm failed in handling anti-money laundering checks on a politically exposed former client, but its oversight was entirely inadvertent and therefore did not amount to professional misconduct, a London tribunal has ruled.
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June 24, 2024
UAE Fund Can't Shake Asset Freeze As Mogul Chases £20M
A London court agreed on Monday to continue a worldwide asset freezing order against a UAE sovereign wealth fund to allow an aviation tycoon to attempt to recover more than £20 million ($25.4 million) after a fraud allegedly assisted by a Dechert LLP partner.
Expert Analysis
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Foreign Assets Ruling Suggests New Tax Avoidance Approach
The U.K. Supreme Court's recent ruling in His Majesty's Revenue & Customs v. Fisher, which found that the scope of the transfer of foreign assets is narrow, highlights that the days of rampant tax avoidance have been left behind, and that the need for wide-ranging and uncertain tax legislation is lessening, says James Austen at Collyer Bristow.
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Lessons To Be Learned From 2023's Bank Failures
This year’s banking collapses, coupled with interest rate rises, inflation and geopolitical instability have highlighted the need for more robust governance, and banks and regulators have learned that they must adequately monitor and control liquidity risk to protect against another financial crisis, say Juliette Mills and Alix Prentice at Cadwalader.
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Key Questions Ahead Of 2024 Right-To-Work Changes
In 2024, the U.K. will increase the maximum civil penalty for companies hiring employees who don't have legal permission to work, so employers should work toward minimizing the risk of noncompliance, including by using an identity service provider to carry out digital right-to-work checks, says Gemma Robinson at Foot Anstey.
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Class Action-Style Claims Are On The Horizon In 2024
Following the implementation of an EU directive enabling consumers to bring actions for collective redress, 2024 will likely see the first serious swathe of class action-style cases in Europe, particularly in areas such as cyber exposures, ESG and product liability, says Henning Schaloske at Clyde & Co.
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An Overview Of European Private Investments in Public Equity
Although still fairly rare, private investments in public equity may continue to be an attractive option for some European issuers seeking to secure equity financing, and advisers planning such an investment should consider the various local options, requirements and norms, say lawyers at Sullivan & Cromwell.
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Cos. Must Monitor Sanctions Regime As Law Remains Unclear
While recent U.K. government guidance and an English High Court's decision in Litasco v. Der Mond Oil, finding that a company is sanctioned when a designated individual is exercising control over it, both address sanctions control issues, disarray in the law remains, highlighting that practitioners should keep reviewing their exposure to the sanctions regime, say lawyers at K&L Gates.
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Unpacking The UK's Proposals To Regulate Crypto-Assets
Recent proposals for crypto-asset regulation in the U.K. demonstrate support for crypto's potential, but there is concern around the authorization process for organizations undertaking crypto-asset activities, and new regulations will require a more detailed assessment of firms' compliance not previously addressed, say Jessica Lee and Menelaos Karampetsos at Brown Rudnick.
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The Top 7 Global ESG Litigation Trends In 2023
To date, ESG litigation across the world can largely be divided into seven forms, but these patterns will continue developing, including a rise in cases against private and state actors, a more complex regulatory environment affecting multinational companies, and an increase in nongovernmental organization activity, say Sophie Lamb and Aleksandra Dulska at Latham.
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Proposed Amendment Would Transform UK Collective Actions
If the recently proposed amendment to the Digital Markets Bill is enacted, the U.K.'s collective action landscape will undergo a seismic change that will likely have significant consequences for consumer-facing businesses, say lawyers at Linklaters.
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UK Takeover Code Changes: Key Points For Bidders, Targets
Newly effective amendments to Rule 21 of the U.K. Takeover Code, which remove legal and administrative constraints on a target operating its business in the ordinary way during an offer, will add clarity for targets and bidders, and are likely to be welcomed by both, say lawyers at Davis Polk.
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EU GDPR Ruling Reiterates Relative Nature Of 'Personal Data'
The Court of Justice of the European Union recently confirmed in Gesamtverband v. Scania that vehicle identification number data can be processed under the General Data Protection Regulation, illustrating that the same dataset may be considered "personal data" for one party, but not another, which suggests a less expansive definition of the term, say lawyers at Van Bael.
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How The UK Smart Regulatory Strategy Fuels AI Innovation
Eight months after the U.K. government published its artificial intelligence white paper, the Communications and Digital Lords Committee considered regulators' role regarding large language models, illustrating that the government is ramping up efforts toward solidifying the U.K.'s position as a global leader in AI regulation and development, say attorneys at Akin Gump.
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How 'Copyleft' Licenses May Affect Generative AI Output
Open-source software and the copyleft licenses that support it, whereby derivative works must be made available for others to use and modify, have been a boon to the development of artificial intelligence, but could lead to issues for coders who use AI to help write code and may find their resulting work exposed, says William Dearn at HLK.
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Russia Ruling Shows UK's Robust Jurisdiction Approach
An English High Court's recent decision to grant an anti-suit injunction in the Russia-related dispute Renaissance Securities v. Chlodwig Enterprises clearly illustrates that obtaining an injunction will likely be more straightforward when the seat is in England compared to when it is abroad, say lawyers at Linklaters.
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How New Loan Origination Regime Will Affect Fund Managers
Although the recent publication of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive II represents more of an evolution than a revolution, the leverage limitations applicable to loan-originating funds are likely to present practical challenges for European credit fund managers, say attorneys at Fried Frank.