Australian boards and senior executives are expected to maintain oversight of risk and compliance issues including bribery sanctions human rights and anti-money laundering In-house counsel perform a central role in supporting this oversight and maintaining compliancenbspIn the first of a five-part ...

On 10 April 2019 the English Supreme Court ruled that nearly 2000 members of rural farming communities in Zambia can bring proceedings in the English courts against the UK-incorporated Vedanta Resources Plc Vedanta The claims relate to the copper mining operations of one of Vedantas subsidiaries ...

Australias lack of enforcement of foreign bribery legislation has attracted increasing criticism in recent years but the Federal Government is expected to soon table legislation proposing wide-ranging reforms We look at two key proposed changes for Australian companies ...

A broadened definition of whistleblower reforms to establish greater protections for whistleblowers and increased sanctions for retaliatory conduct are some of the recommendations by a Senate committee looking into whistleblower protections in the corporate public and not-for-profit sector We expect ...

The Australian Government has introduced the Crimes Legislation Amendment Combatting Corporate Crime Bill 2017 into the Senate which if passed into law will significantly strengthen Australias foreign bribery laws and introduce a Deferred Prosecution Agreement scheme for resolving corporate criminal ...

Today the Federal Government will introduce legislation that will significantly overhaul Australias foreign bribery laws and will also establish a deferred prosecution regime that is intended to provide an incentive for companies to self-report a range of serious white-collar crime matters The ...

Best practice guidelines for self-reporting of foreign bribery and related offending by corporations have been published by the AFP and the CDPP ...

Various new foreign exchange regulations governing the use of all types of foreign currency accounts including investment accounts of Vietnamese enterprises and their investors have recently come into effect The changes will affect current and potential foreign investors as well as foreign-invested ...

Australia continues to expand its network of investment treaties In light of this Australian investors should consider a review of the treaty protections that apply to their foreign investments If a treaty includes an investor-State dispute settlement mechanism the investor may be able to resolve ...

In a shift from the previous Australian Governments position a free trade agreement between Korea and Australia which was recently concluded by the new Coalition Government will include investor-state dispute settlement clauses ...