All posts in the Recent case category

Charles Taylor: guilty, but what does it mean for international law?

Charles Taylor, the deposed president of Liberia, was found guilty of 11 charges including murder, rape, sexual slavery and enforced amputations, unanimously, by a UN-backed tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, in The Hague on 26 April 2012. The man who “aided and abetted” war crimes in Sierra Leone heard the judgment with hands clasped in front of him, blinking as the list of his criminal responsibility was read out. Mr Taylor is the first ex-head of state to be prosecuted by an international criminal court since Admiral Karl Donitz, the man who assumed control of Nazi Germany following Hitler’s suicide, in 1946.

On camera – televising criminal proceedings

Television cameras were today allowed to record the sentencing of David Gilroy in the High Court in Edinburgh. This is the first time that sentencing in a UK court has been filmed for broadcast the same day – normally proceedings in Scotland are only occasionally filmed for documentaries to be broadcast weeks or months later and are heavily edited by lawyers involved in the case. Filming in most English courts has been banned since 1925.

Insider dealing v insider trading

This month the headline grabbing case for the FSA was that of Ian Hannam, the former banker at JP Morgan, who was fined £450,000 for relaying inside information about his client Heritage Oil to a prospective client in 2008. Hannam’s case is one of several, including David Einhorn and Nicholas Kyprios, which over the course of the last few months alone have been publically paraded by the FSA in order to demonstrate their stringent enforcement policy. Whilst those who work in the finance and banking sector can be left in little doubt that the FSA will vigorously pursue individuals who they believe may have engaged in market abuse or insider dealing, the threat in reality is that of a civil penalty rather than a criminal sanction.

Although the FSA has undoubtedly stepped up several gears in respect of its criminal prosecution of insider dealing, this increased effort has yet to be rewarded with the level of convictions that are being enjoyed by prosecutors in the US. Since 2009 the US Attorney’s Offices in New York alone have prosecuted 66 people for insider trading and have obtained 57 convictions and guilty pleas. In contrast, as of February 2012, the FSA had secured only 11 convictions.

US-UK extradition treaty – will Home Affairs Committee report silence public disquiet?

Earlier today the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee published a report on the US-UK extradition treaty. A further report on the operation of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) is expected later this year.

Both reports emerge from curious circumstances, coming so soon after the publication of the independent Sir Scott Baker review in September 2011. That review was the most exhaustive analysis of this country’s extradition laws ever undertaken, devoting no less than 51 pages to the US-UK extradition treaty (the report of the Home Affairs Committee stretches to only 10 pages). Many of those who made representations to Sir Scott’s panel gave similar evidence to the MPs comprising the Home Affairs Committee. So why another report?

Clamping down on scrap metal thieves

Following a dramatic rise in prices and a spate of incidents which have seen rail networks disrupted, church roofs pillaged and towns plunged into darkness, the scrap metal theft “epidemic” has been thrust into the spotlight. The issue has even made it into an episode of Eastenders – a sure sign of topicality! But why scrap metal? Simply put, scrap metal is hard to identify and can be sold for cash (at ever-increasing prices), making it an attractive category of stolen merchandise. It may seem like a niche offence but metal theft is estimated to cost the country £1 billion annually, with more than 1,000 offences taking place every week.

Confiscation – behind the headlines

On Tuesday last week the CPS released details of 143 criminals who have failed to pay monies owed under Confiscation Orders, orders aimed at depriving a convicted person of the spoils of their crime. The headline on the front page of the Evening Standard read: “Exposed: Crooks who owe Britain £600 million” and the article went on to detail the names of the top 10 “Mr Bigs” together with photos of their glamorous homes and luxury cars.

Blagging and the DPA – is it time to make offences imprisonable?

Despite it being almost 10 years since the start of Operation Motorman, and the subsequent furore which lead to the closure of the News of the World, it is still not possible for a person found guilty of illegally obtaining and disclosing personal information to be imprisoned for that offence. However, strong words from the Information Commissioner’s Office this week suggest that this may be ripe for change.

FSA restructuring – what implications for financial crime prosecutions?

On 15 February 2012, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) announced that the managing director of its conduct business unit, Margaret Cole, will leave the financial regulator at the end of March. Her exit follows a number of departures of senior staff from the FSA as the coalition government continues to implement its policy to restructure the way in which the financial industry in the UK is regulated. So what is the shape of things to come?

FSA gets tough on market abuse – implications of the Einhorn case

The market abuse case brought by the FSA against David Einhorn and Greenlight Capital in which a financial penalty in excess of £7 million was announced last week has laid down a prominent marker for all those operating in the UK financial markets, wherever in the world they may be based. Local laws and the interpretation of those laws by overseas regulators may be very different to the regulatory approach in the UK so foreign market participants need to take particular heed of this case.

Why cheating in sport is still a problem and what it means for the Olympics

Notwithstanding the shock felt by many cricket fans over the recent Pakistani spot-fixing case, cheating and corruption has long been a problem in sport. Ever since Hanse Cronje admitted taking money from betting syndicates in India and around the world more than a decade ago, the integrity of the modern game of professional cricket has been tarnished.