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Regulators and courts in common law jurisdictions around the world are being given significant and increasing powers to impose financial penalties without traditional criminal law safeguards. Competition law has been particularly susceptible to arguments that traditional safeguards should be discarded to aid regulators in securing convictions. In the first competition case to go to trial in Hong Kong, the Competition Tribunal held in 2019 that in competition proceedings seeking financial penalties, the authority had the burden to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. This article considers the approach taken in other common law jurisdictions and scope to argue for increased safeguards and human rights protections for clients facing financial penalties.

On 30 August 2022, the Indonesian House of Representatives agreed to pass a law ratifying the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the largest regional free trade agreement outside the World Trade Organization — involving 10 ASEAN countries and five non-ASEAN countries, i.e., China, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and South Korea. With the passing of this law, which still requires promulgation by the President, RCEP is set to come into force for Indonesia, possibly before the end of the year.

The UK government has introduced a bill to help bring into force the UK-Australia and the UK-New Zealand Free Trade Agreements (“FTAs“).

The bill is a key step in ratifying the FTAs but before they come into force, Parliament must scrutinise the FTAs, agree the bill and pass secondary legislation to make the changes required to the UK’s procurement regime to meet the terms of the FTAs.

Representatives of the EU and New Zealand held negotiations from 14 to 31 March 2022, discussing most areas of the future free trade agreement between the jurisdictions. According to a two-pager published by the European Commission, EU’s request to be exempt from New Zealand’s import customs fees is the only outstanding element in the text as far as the topic “Trade in goods” is concerned.