The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that an original version of a grievance investigation report that did not attract legal advice or litigation privilege when it was drafted could not acquire privilege status retrospectively.
The European Whistleblowing Directive was to be implemented by the European Union’s 27 member states by no later than 17 December 2021, impacting employers with operations in those jurisdictions. Member states are still passing their implementing legislation, meaning employers are facing a period of intense activity as they adapt to changes in legislation across the region.
The most comprehensive guide of its kind, the Global Attorney-Client Privilege Guide is an interactive resource covering the law and best practices on privilege in 34 key jurisdictions.
The up-to-date understanding of the law of privilege found in the Guide helps companies to maximize the available protections and ensure that, where possible, privilege is maintained.
When litigation is threatened, companies whose employees know how to recognize and protect privileged information are better prepared to respond to the risks.
The Annual Compliance Conference begins next week and attracts over 6,000 in-house senior legal and compliance professionals from across the world. This leading compliance conference will be held across five weeks from 6 September – 6 October 2022. We will be virtually delivering our cutting-edge insights and guidance on key global compliance, investigations and ethics issues. Our global experts will provide practical insights and analysis on significant developments:
• anti-bribery
• corruption and economic crime
• customs and FTAs
• ESG, supply chain and product compliance
• antitrust and competition
• export controls, sanctions and foreign investment
Click here to view the full agenda and register your interest in joining us virtually at this must attend global compliance conference for senior in-house legal and compliance professionals.
This article, by Francis Mayebe, Candidate Attorney in the Tax Practice in Johannesburg and Virusha Subban, Head of the Johannesburg Tax Practice, looks at the criteria and guidelines for voluntary tax disclosure in South Africa. The article outlines a recent case, and analyses the meaning of “voluntary” within the context of the voluntary disclosure program in South Africa.
Annual Compliance Conference
Our popular Annual Compliance Conference, which attracts over 6,000 in-house senior legal and compliance professionals from across the world, will be held across five weeks from 6 September – 6 October 2022. We will be virtually delivering our cutting-edge insights and guidance on key global compliance, investigations and ethics issues. Our global experts will provide practical insights and analysis on significant developments across:
– anti-bribery
– corruption and economic crime
– customs and FTAs
– ESG, supply chain and product compliance
– antitrust and competition
– export controls, sanctions and foreign investment
Click https://www.bakermckenzie.com/en/insight/events/2022/10/annual-compliance-conference to register your interest in joining us virtually at this must attend global compliance conference for senior in-house legal and compliance professionals.
On 24 May 2022, the Dutch Supreme Court passed judgment between, on one hand, the Royal Dutch Shell PLC and 15 of Shell’s in-house lawyers (“Shell”), and on the other hand, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service.1 The Supreme Court held that both Shell’s and the Public Prosecution Service’s complaints were inadmissible because the decision of the court of first instance should be considered as an ‘interim decision’ (in Dutch: ‘tussenbeschikking’), and interim decisions are not open to cassation. The Supreme Court took the opportunity to provide some insights in relation to the scope and application of legal professional privilege of in-house lawyers by way of obiter dictum.
Our Future of Disputes UK Virtual Programme brought speakers from leading in-house institutions – including AON, Gilead, GPW Group, HSBC, JP Morgan, Rio Tinto, Salesforce and Siemens – together with Baker McKenzie dispute resolution specialists to discuss key challenges in litigation, arbitration and investigations likely to arise over the next year.
We tackled the practicalities around contract disputes and termination, engaging with government and regulators, strategies to manage litigation risk arising from internal investigations, and provided an overview of how case lifecycles are likely to unfold following recent reforms of litigation and arbitration mechanisms. Our speakers share insights garnered from managing complex, multijurisdictional disputes and offer strategies to help you shape your organisation’s business resilience and readiness for litigation in the medium and long term.
In 2008, Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal issued a landmark judgment in Koon Wing Yee v Insider Dealing Tribunal deciding that if a regulator is seeking a financial penalty, the individual or company being investigated is, for human rights purposes, facing a criminal charge and entitled to fundamental Bill of Rights protections.
Hong Kong’s competition law was being drafted at the time. The enforcement framework and law were fundamentally rewritten because of Koon. The Administration said that appropriate criminal safeguards, including fair trial, protection against self-incrimination and standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt, must be in place both during investigation and trial to meet the requirements of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights. In 2019, in the first case to come to trial, Hong Kong’s Competition Tribunal agreed.
Dong Wei v Shell Trading (Pte) Ltd and anor [2022] SGHC(A) 8 concerned an appeal from the decision of the Singapore High Court in a case relating to the termination of an employee’s employment without cause and with pay in lieu of notice, following two investigations into allegations of conflicts of interest.