Legal News

The Insolvency Service officially confirmed that 51-year-old Vincent Christopher Larkin has been banned from acting for six years after failing to settle almost £210,000 in outstanding tax. Absent from the hearing, Larkin was disqualified and was also ordered to pay costs of £7,355.80. Larkin was the director then......

The Financial Conduct Authority ( FCA) has warmly welcomed the Court of Appeal’s decision to refuse leave for a judicial review in the matter of R ( Sutton) v FCA. A group of crude‑oil traders had made an application seeking a judicial review of the FCA’s choice to seek information from UK residents so as to assist the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission ( CFTC) with an ongoing probe into certain crude oil trading on a......

The Insolvency Service has revealed that Christopher Bateman, 49, of Knutsford, and Nicola Fairweather, 48, of Macclesfield, directors of two linked companies, GCC Management Ltd and Amek Solutions Ltd, have been disqualified for a combined 25 years after misusing millions of pounds of investors’ funds in a care home investment scheme. The Insolvency Service’s investigations began when the two companies entered insolvency procedures. GCC Management was an unregulated company that offered people the chance to invest in the purchase of care homes. While Amek Solutions advised on and/or arranged as stated by investigators......

The United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation, Retained Regulation ( EU) 2016/679, and the Freedom of Information Act 2000 ( FIA 2000) oblige public and private bodies to reply to subject access requests within one to three months when people seek details of the personal data those organisations hold about them. Yet, on 28 September 2022, the ICO announced that an investigation had found Virgin Media, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, the London Borough of Croydon, Kent Police, the London Borough of Hackney and the London Borough of Lambeth had 'repeatedly failed' to meet this statutory deadline. Following these conclusions, the regulator issued reprimands to all seven organisations and, under the FIA 2000, practice recommendations to two of the London boroughs. The agency added that these bodies have three to six months to make improvements or 'further...

With the global shift towards net zero, a swell of lawsuits targeting firms that misrepresent their offerings as green is looming. However, although the UK watchdog has repeatedly vowed to tackle ‘greenwashing’, including through enforcement, the law does not invariably favour the Financial Conduct Authority ( FCA). As environmental activists and disgruntled investors bring claims against businesses for overstating the sustainability of their products, the regulator’s capacity to intervene will seem ever more constrained unless its powers are strengthened. Without stronger powers, the regulator’s ability to act will look increasingly reduced, particularly as allegations accumulate and claimants press for action against exaggerated sustainability claims. Activity on sustainable finance is progressing at pace in the UK. In November 2020, the government was first to unveil mandatory climate-risk reporting. By the close of 2023, major financial institutions and listed corporates must publish...

FACT has released research carried out by Opentext Security Solutions into the risks posed by illegal sports streaming sites. The study shows these platforms expose fans to financial fraud, harmful scams and explicit material. It further concludes that users are 'bombarded' with threats such as crypto scams, extreme or explicit pop-ups, and banking trojans, with the latter deemed the most dangerous hazard for viewers, according to the research findings published by FACT......

The Jersey Financial Services Commission ( JFSC) imposed a £498,000 financial penalty on 4 August 2022 on Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets plc’s Jersey branch in the Channel Island of Jersey for having treated a correspondent bank as an ordinary commercial client between 2008 and 2020. The outcome was disclosed on 12 August 2022. Consequently, according to the island’s regulator, Lloyds failed to implement the heightened controls required under Jersey’s AML regulations. Correspondent banks deliver services to other lenders to facilitate transactions and generally do not have a direct link to the customers behind those payments, which makes it difficult for them to confirm information or carry out due diligence. The head of the Jersey branch, Alasdair Gardner, acknowledged the commission’s conclusions, accepting that falling short of the rules governing the management of the correspondent banking relationship was...

Breaches of UK trade and financial sanctions are pursued through criminal or civil action. Since 15 June 2022, civil enforcement of UK financial sanctions operates on a strict liability footing, meaning liability can arise even without knowledge or reasonable suspicion of a breach. Businesses should therefore scrutinise their sanctions compliance frameworks to ensure robust processes and procedures exist to spot and reduce sanctions risk. The move to strict liability reflects a deliberate step by HM Treasury and OFSI to align the UK approach, where appropriate, with the tougher US model. OFSI OFSI may now publish information about financial sanctions breaches even when no monetary penalty is imposed, including naming the persons responsible. This power is used only where a breach is found and there is a significant compliance lesson for industry, with an opportunity to make...

What are the practical implications of this case? In dismissing Bloomberg’s appeal, the Supreme Court relied extensively on a run of first‑instance decisions recognising a claimant’s reasonable expectation of privacy while they are the subject of a state investigation but have not been charged. The outcome is unsurprising, yet claimant representatives will view it as welcome confirmation that this expectation is the legitimate starting point in any given case. Although the dispute centres on the tort of misuse of private information, the court’s acceptance that, in appropriate circumstances, an individual’s reputation may fall within Article 8 will interest defamation specialists. The ruling also intensifies scrutiny of the long‑standing common law principle in Bonnard v Perryman [1891] 2 Ch 269. In essence, that principle bars a claimant from securing an interim injunction to stop publication of proposed defamatory material where the defendant indicates an...

Judge Sara Cockerill handed the bank a penalty at Southwark Crown Court for breaching regulations after a regional commodities trader paid in £365m ( US$483m), chiefly in cash, over five years. She remarked that, while the bank was not itself complicit in the laundering taking place, the crimes could not have occurred without its shortcomings. The judge set out numerous lapses and failures by the lender in overseeing and probing Fowler Oldfield Ltd, a gold dealer connected to the case......

The Financial Conduct Authority ( FCA) has barred Jon Frensham (previously known as Jonathan James Hunt) from carrying out regulated activity. The FCA concluded Frensham, an independent financial adviser and sole director of Frensham Wealth Limited, lacks the integrity to operate in financial services. In March 2017, Frensham was found guilty of attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming. He committed this offence......

The Care Quality Commission ( CQC) secured a prosecution against Belvedere Private Hospital for failing to display its CQC ratings. Pemberdeen Laser Cosmetic Surgery Clinic Limited, which operates Belvedere Private Hospital, was fined £500 and ordered to pay £4,520 in costs plus a £50 surcharge at Bromley Magistrates’ Court. CQC stated the hospital’s website carried a link to CQC website......

Ahuja Investments Ltd v Victorygame Ltd and another [2021] EWHC 1543 ( Ch) What are the practical implications of this case? Mr Justice Vos determined that there is no overarching rule barring a claim to litigation privilege merely because the opposing party was prompted to give information they would not have disclosed had they known the genuine, deliberately hidden objective of the request. The rationale is that litigation privilege exists to permit a party to obtain material to place before their legal advisers for the conduct of their case without concern that such material must be handed to the other side (see paras [59] and [61]). That said, practitioners should exercise caution. The authorities reviewed demonstrate that where there is unequivocal deceit by the requester, and where the exchange involves the litigating parties themselves rather than a third party, the courts have not...

Allen v Ealing London Borough Council [2021] EWHC 948 ( Admin) What are the practical implications of this case? This judgment brings long-awaited clarity to a point that has caused uncertainty for some thirty years, because no appellate court had previously ruled squarely upon it. A series of earlier cases— Hewlings v Mc Lean Homes East Anglia Ltd [2001] 2 All ER 281; Hall v Kingston upon Hull City Council; Ireland v Birmingham City Council; Baker v Birmingham City Council [1999] 2 All ER 609; Leeds v Islington London Borough [1998] Lexis Citation 2551—considered comparable questions and made obiter comments, yet the central issue persisted unresolved. The outcome is welcomed by those affected by statutory nuisances, as it confirms Parliament’s intention that the procedure for obtaining abatement should be easy for lay persons to use and understand in practice and in...

The complete paper is available here. An engaging seminar on the report, hosted with the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, can also be accessed here. A proposed UK HRDD law The HRDD law could place the following duties on subjected organisations (broadly): to prevent negative human rights and environmental impacts arising from their domestic and overseas operations, including within their supply and value chains to devise and apply appropriate due diligence procedures to avert such impacts to publish a forward-looking plan for future procedures to be adopted, together with an assessment of the effectiveness of past procedures The report also proposes liability......

The objections centre on well-known long-standing concerns over data retention, access for law enforcement, and immigration policy; moreover, lawmakers went further, drawing attention to serious earlier issues with the UK’s use of the Schengen Information System ( SIS) database and to both potentially conflicting commitments under other international agreements. Under EU data protection rules, sending personal data to countries beyond the EEA is strictly lawful only where protection is judged ‘adequate’, where extra safeguards are adopted, or where one of a small set of derogations applies. At present, ongoing data flows between the EU and the UK run under an interim framework embedded in the broader EU– UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement of December 2020, which will lapse by June 2021 at the latest. The Commission must determine whether the UK, which officially departed the 27‑nation EU last year, affords...

This is a retrospective on some of the most notable corporate crime cases to reach the courts in 2020. Serious Fraud Office’s Barclays case collapses In February 2020, the Serious Fraud Office ( SFO) endured a bruising loss when a jury cleared three ex- Barclays plc directors of fraud linked to the bank’s financial-crisis fundraising, prompting doubts about the wisdom of pressing on through two trials and repeated courtroom reverses. The Old Bailey prosecution had been weakened by a series of heavy blows starting in 2018, when charges against the bank itself were thrown out. In 2019, midway through the trial of the individual defendants, the presiding judge directed the acquittal of former Chief Executive John Varley. According to Neil Williams, legal director at Rahman Ravelli, warning signs should have sounded once the Court of Appeal backed the ruling that the bank should not be...

Robert Tantular v AG [2020] JCA234 What are the practical implications of this case? A saisie operates as a freezing mechanism that the Attorney General may seek in a variety of circumstances, including when acting for the government of a country or territory outside Jersey while an external confiscation order is awaiting registration. The authority to grant a saisie stems from Articles 15 and 16 of the Proceeds of Crime ( Jersey) Law 1999, as adapted by the Proceeds of Crime ( Enforcement of Confiscation Orders) ( Jersey) Regulations 2008 (the “ Modified Law”). Under Article 16(4)(b) of the Modified Law, the court may restrain any specified person from dealing with any realisable property that they hold, whether or not the assets are described in the order. The issue on appeal mirrored the question at first...

What is the relevance of UK data protection law to the creation or sharing of deepfakes? Is a deepfake likely to be personal data? Neither the General Data Protection Regulation, Regulation ( EU) 2016/976 ( EU GDPR), nor the Data Protection Act 2018 ( DPA 2018) expressly addresses deepfakes. The real question is whether deepfakes fall within the scope of data protection rules, and in particular the DPA 2018. Personal data covers any information linked to an identified or identifiable living individual, which can include a person’s image or voice. In this setting, creating deepfakes involves training an artificial intelligence ( AI) system on the target individual’s facial features and vocal characteristics, enabling those elements to be placed into material featuring another person; doing so necessarily relies on a person’s audio and/or video recordings. Consequently, even if someone were to argue that the...

On Friday 16 October 2020, the Information Commissioner’s Office ( ICO) confirmed that the airline had not implemented adequate security controls, leading to a data breach impacting more than 400,000 customers. In a 114-page penalty notice, the ICO determined that BA infringed the integrity and confidentiality requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation, Regulation ( EU) 2016/679 ( GDPR), by failing to ensure the proper protection of personal data. ‘ The attack exposed numerous shortcomings across BA’s security arrangements and network,’ the regulator noted (see here). Trinidad and Tobago The decision, for the first time, sets out details of the incident and emphasises the risks in how organisations manage remote access to their servers, particularly during the coronavirus ( COVID-19) pandemic. The breach began on 22 June 2018, when an unknown attacker gained entry to BA’s network using the credentials of a Swissport...