‘National disclosure week’ suffered a bad few days as two trials collapsed in a long-running series of high-profile disclosure failures. The first trial to collapse was a £34 million money-laundering trial, which the judge called “systemic and catastrophic” failings by the Crown Prosecution Services (CPS). Following that, a £3 million diamond fraud trial also collapsed. […]
The extradition case of Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, concluded earlier this year with a deal which was more about international politics than criminal justice. In the UK, former Autonomy boss Mike Lynch is rallying politicians to his side to resist being sent to the US on fraud charges, and in Sardinia […]
INTERPOL was initially conceived during the first International Criminal Police Congress of 1914, which brought officials from 24 countries together to discuss cooperation in law enforcement. The plan was to build an organization which allowed national police to share and access information internationally, including about individuals accused of serious crimes. As INTERPOL now has 194 […]
What is Extradition? Extradition is the process by which an individual, who is accused or convicted of a criminal offence and is wanted to stand trial or to serve a sentence, is surrendered by one country (where that individual is physically present) to the country in which he/she is wanted. The procedure differs slightly, depending […]
Regional tensions, populist movements and weakened multilateral institutions mean that international trust and co-operation are at a low ebb. Countries launch state-sponsored cyber-attacks and even attempt assassination on our streets. Meanwhile, out of sight and largely unscrutinised by our courts, those same countries issue written demands that the UK complies with, purely on their say […]
We are in the midst of an epidemic of fraud. In one global survey, over 5000 respondents in up to 99 countries were interviewed and nearly 50 percent had been the victim of at least one fraud. On average companies were found to have experienced six frauds in 2020 at a loss of $42 billion*. […]
Over the last decade, reliance on economic sanctions as the spinal cord of western foreign policy has dramatically increased the risks for businesses with an international footprint. The sheer number of countries that now feature in international or domestic sanctions regimes mean that anyone engaging, even indirectly, in any dealings involving such countries faces huge […]
We are pleased to announce that Hannah Laming will be speaking at the IBA webinar on the impact of the European public prosecutor’s office on the fight against corruption, taking place on the 20th of October 2021. The expert panel will be assessing the legislation regarding the European public prosecutor’s office (EPPO) and the current EU […]
Ever since the US-UK extradition treaty was signed in 2003 there have since been heated arguments about whether it is lopsided. One reason may be that US prosecutors are more aggressive in pursuing extra-territorial cases, such as the case against Autonomy founder, Mike Lynch, whose actions took place in the UK but are alleged to […]
Michael O’Kane will be speaking on the RUSI (Royal United Services Institute) Financial Crime Insights podcast on 8th of October 2021. This episode will explore the future trajectory of abuse of the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) standards. Listen here.
