Please join us for a weekly series, hosted by Baker McKenzie’s North America Government Enforcement partners Tom Firestone and Jerome Tomas.
This week’s discussion will cover the following;
• our white collar thoughts on this week’s “Economist” article on ESG
• the SEC breaks new ground in insider trading case involving crypto assets
• the DOJ remains vigilant in promoting competition in the labor markets through several recent enforcement efforts
On 9 July 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order announcing his administration’s commitment to increasing vigorous antitrust enforcement. At the one-year anniversary of the EO, a recent flurry of enforcement efforts signals that the Department of Justice remains vigilant in carrying out the EO’s initiatives, especially in the labor markets.
On 13 July 2021, the Federal Economic Competition Commission published in the Federal Official Gazette the notice regarding the initiation of an investigation due to possible absolute monopolistic practices allegedly carried out in the market for maritime transportation services in the state of Quintana Roo.
Absolute monopolistic practices are anti-competitive agreements, contracts or arrangements between competing economic agents, whose object or effect is the manipulation of prices, restriction or limitation of supply or demand, division or segmentation of markets, agreement or coordination of bids in auctions, as well as the exchange of information between competitors to carry out any of the aforementioned conducts. These practices can also be referred to as horizontal or cartel practices.
On 8 July 2022, the Department of Justice announced a settlement of cybersecurity fraud charges against Aerojet Rocketdyne Inc. (Aerojet) following an action under the False Claims Act. Aerojet agreed to pay USD 9 million to the US government to settle allegations that it misrepresented its compliance with cybersecurity requirements when entering into federal government contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense.
In one of the first cases in Hong Kong in which the court has granted freezing injunctions over bitcoins, the Court of First Instance has now handed down judgment in the trial of Nico Constantijn v Stive Jean-Paul Dan [2022] HKCFI 1254. The court held that the defendant acted as the plaintiff’s sales agent in respect of the plaintiff’s bitcoins. The court found the defendant had breached his fiduciary duties in failing to account to the plaintiff for the bitcoins and the relevant sales proceeds. Consequently, the court held that the defendant held on trust for the plaintiff the unsold bitcoins, the proceeds from the sale of the bitcoins and the fruits thereof.
Annual Compliance Conference
Our popular Annual Compliance Conference, which attracts over 6,000 in-house senior legal and compliance professionals from across the world, will be held across five weeks from 6 September – 6 October 2022. We will be virtually delivering our cutting-edge insights and guidance on key global compliance, investigations and ethics issues. Our global experts will provide practical insights and analysis on significant developments across:
– anti-bribery
– corruption and economic crime
– customs and FTAs
– ESG, supply chain and product compliance
– antitrust and competition
– export controls, sanctions and foreign investment
Click https://www.bakermckenzie.com/en/insight/events/2022/10/annual-compliance-conference to register your interest in joining us virtually at this must attend global compliance conference for senior in-house legal and compliance professionals.
In this edition of In the Know, we will provide a “primer” in respect of the developments in the digital bond space, using the European Investment Bank bond as a potential bellwether event for future development in our markets and then try and address some fundamental questions — what does all this mean for our market? Where are we headed now?
The June edition of the China employment law update includes developments such as measures to prevent social insurance fraud being formally implemented, new guidelines being issued on the handling of employment dispute arbitration and litigation, and guidance on employment disputes relating to pandemic control measures.
In 2008, Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal issued a landmark judgment in Koon Wing Yee v Insider Dealing Tribunal deciding that if a regulator is seeking a financial penalty, the individual or company being investigated is, for human rights purposes, facing a criminal charge and entitled to fundamental Bill of Rights protections.
Hong Kong’s competition law was being drafted at the time. The enforcement framework and law were fundamentally rewritten because of Koon. The Administration said that appropriate criminal safeguards, including fair trial, protection against self-incrimination and standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt, must be in place both during investigation and trial to meet the requirements of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights. In 2019, in the first case to come to trial, Hong Kong’s Competition Tribunal agreed.
The IRS did not follow notice-and-comment procedures when it issued Notice 2007-83. A theme underlying a number of court decisions since the Supreme Court’s decision in Mayo Foundation is that the Administrative Procedure Act does apply to the IRS – just like it applies to every other administrative agency. The IRS appears to be slowly coming to recognize this reality, but for many, many years, the agency acted as if the APA did not apply to its actions. The Sixth Circuit’s recent decision in Mann Construction, Inc. v. United States illustrates the importance of the IRS’ prior failures in this regard, in this case in the context of listed transactions.