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Rayner my parade! The importance of specialist advice.
Jemma Brimblecombe
We are delighted to present, as a guest blog, the thoughts and views of Dr Valentyn Gvozdiy, managing partner of Golaw in Kyiv. Dr Gvozdiy outlines the significant changes to criminal procedure that have been heralded by the Russian invasion of his country and the subsequent adoption of martial law.
On Thursday 5 May, Kingsley Napley hosted the 4th annual Cross-Border Criminal Law Conference, which focused on individual and corporate accountability for international crimes.
Whilst it is anticipated that prosecutions under the National Security and Investment Act 2021 (‘the Act’) will be exceptionally rare, the criminal sanctions set out in it are explicitly framed to create a “sufficiently robust deterrent to ensure compliance.” The provisions punish corporates and individual officers who connive or consent to commit an offence, as well as individual officers who are negligent (s.36). In addition, they are also extra-territorial (s.52), meaning that the scope of liability is particularly wide-ranging.
The Prime Minister recently committed the UK’s support to achieving justice in respect of the war crimes allegations arising out of the Ukraine conflict. The conflict and associated allegations raise questions over the UK’s commitment and ability to bring prosecutions under the doctrine of “universal jurisdiction”. Universal jurisdiction describes the jurisdiction that is available in the national courts of many countries to prosecute individuals for the most serious international crimes, even if those crimes occurred abroad and neither the defendants nor victims have any connection to that country. Why only a few such prosecutions have taken place in the UK will be the topic of one of two panel discussions at Kingsley Napley’s Cross Border Criminal Law Conference on 5 May 2022.
This quarterly international criminal law update provides a summary of the news stories in the period January – March 2022. The relevance of international criminal law has been tragically highlighted by the current events in the Ukraine. This fast moving event has been covered below, along with a number of other international criminal law updates.
Jemma Brimblecombe
Charles Richardson
Oliver Oldman
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