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.
We submitted evidence to the Arbitration Bill [HL] Special Bill Committee on 6 February 2024. This further evidence is submitted on invitation from the Chair to address three additional questions as answered below.
Threats to the UK’s democracy in the context of election finance, including foreign money, dirty money and the risk of undue influence by high-level donors.
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 the UK has taken long-needed steps to counter economic crimes including corruption and kleptocracy. This includes two Economic Crime Acts and a new Economic Crime Plan. While we welcome this important progress, the UK remains vulnerable in several critical areas.
This joint submission with Transparency International UK focuses on three areas related to the UK’s economic security that were each set out in the Integrated Review Refresh 2023.
While the Law Commission ultimately decided that the balance between confidentiality and transparency is best left to the courts to address, we believe the Arbitration Bill should introduce statutory safeguards to protect arbitration from being abused to conceal corruption or fraud.
Spotlight on Corruption’s submission to HM Treasury’s consultation: “Reform of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Supervisory Regime”
The global sanctions response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been unprecedented, not only in terms of the scale and severity of sanctions measures that have been imposed but also the extent of international coordination and cooperation that this has entailed. The rapid expansion of the UK’s sanctions programme has not been without its challenges, but the UK government should be credited for acting at speed and under significant pressure in the early stages of the war to scale up its sanctions response.