Today the Court of Appeal found that the UK National Crime Agency’s (NCA) decision to refuse to investigate consignments of cotton goods imported from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China (XUAR), that were said to have been produced by slave labour, was unlawful.
Kingsley Napley’s Public and Criminal Law teams were delighted to represent Spotlight on Corruption in its intervention and instruct Kennedy Talbot KC of 33 Chancery Lane, whose significant contributions were recognised in the judgment.
The Court overturned a 2023 High Court decision which raised serious implications for the UK’s framework for investigating money laundering and recovering the proceeds of crime under the UK’s Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA).
After concessions were made by the NCA, the appeal focused on a narrow point – whether the NCA had erred in their interpretation of the law in refusing to open a criminal investigation into the consignments of cotton products under POCA, and open a civil investigation to recover the cotton products and the proceeds of sale.
The landmark decision handed down by three Court of Appeal judges, the Lady Chief Justice, Lord Justice Bean, and Lady Justice Andrews, clarified the law in two key ways:
- the NCA does not need to identify specific evidence of “unlawful conduct” before it can decide to open an investigation; and
- paying market value (adequate consideration) for criminal property does not cleanse the property of its criminal nature anywhere in the supply chain.
The Court underlined that 85% of cotton grown in China comes from the XUAR and that it is accepted that there is “a diverse, substantial, and growing body of evidence that serious human rights abuses are occurring in the XUAR cotton industry on a large scale.”
Following this judgment, the NCA will have to reconsider its decision not to carry out an investigation.
Read the judgment here:
Spotlight on Corruption was represented by Kennedy Talbot KC of 33 Chancery Lane before the Court of Appeal and Sophie Kemp, Katherine Tyler, and Sameera Abdulrehman of Kingsley Napley LLP.
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