It is notoriously hard to access documents from courts in England and Wales. It can even be hard to find out when a trial is taking place. This makes monitoring how justice is done in the UK very difficult. Economic crime cases can take many months to come to trial, wasting precious public resources and undermining confidence in the enforcement bodies.
Our unique court monitoring programme works to ensure that economic crime cases are subject to proper public scrutiny. And we advocate for a comprehensive public database of court documents, that captures all judgements and sentencing remarks and key documents relating to a trial, and a more effective court listing system.
Some significant strides were taken by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) under the Starmer administration to tackle corruption and abuses of power. But further action is needed to stop powerful...
The SFO has struck a confidential settlement with ENRC, ending the Kazakh mining company’s long-running litigation. But with the terms undisclosed, the public is still in the dark about how much, if any, of the $290 million in damages sought by ENRC will be paid.
The High Court is set to rule on a defining challenge to the powers of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) after London libel firm Carter Ruck and British businessman Mohamed Amersi contested whether the legal regulator can compel the disclosure of legally privileged material during its investigations into professional misconduct.
Today the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and Ultra Electronics Holdings Limited (Ultra Electronics) entered into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA), with the defence and security company paying almost £15 million to resolve a long-running bribery probe. This penalty includes a £10 million penalty plus £4.8 million to cover the SFO’s costs.
Yesterday the UK Supreme Court unanimously found that P&ID, the small offshore company that tried to use arbitration proceedings to extort over $11 billion from Nigeria, must pay a hefty...
There were unprecedented scenes this week at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal as the high-profile prosecution of lawyer Christopher Hutchings by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) was moved into private session. ...
As regular observers of court proceedings, our experience is that the public access rights which flow from the principle of open justice are not always a practical reality. The most frequent and frustrating challenge we encounter in this regard relates to our requests for non-party access to court documents.
Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill has responded to the recent letter sent by Spotlight on Corruption and the other members of the Courts and Tribunals Observers’ Network pointing...
