Virgin could lose immunity from price-fixing penalties | Air Transport Intelligence
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Virgin Atlantic could face losing its immunity from penalties for alleged price-fixing activity after the UK Office of Fair Trading was forced to withdraw criminal proceedings against four former and current British Airways executives due to the late emergence of previously-undisclosed electronic evidence.
A jury at Southwark Crown Court in London today acquitted BA’s current director of sales and marketing, Andrew Crawley, former head of UK and Ireland sales Alan Burnett, former commercial director Martin George and former head of corporate communications Iain Burns of cartel charges related to the price-fixing of fuel surcharges with Virgin Atlantic on long-haul passenger flights between July 2004 and April 2006.
Virgin Atlantic was granted immunity from penalties after it relayed details of the exchanges to the OFT. But the OFT says that last week it discovered “a substantial volume of electronic material, which neither the OFT nor the defence had previously been able to review” and, as a result of the late discovery, it accepts that “to continue with the trial in light of this unforeseen development would be potentially unfair to the defendants”.
The previously-undisclosed material includes emails sent or received by Virgin Atlantic’s former director of corporate affairs, Paul Moore. The OFT says it will now “be reviewing the role played by Virgin Atlantic and its advisers in light of the airline’s obligations to provide the OFT with continuous and complete co-operation”, adding that “this may have potential consequences for Virgin's immunity from penalties”.
The OFT stresses that today’s decision relates only to criminal proceedings against the four BA executives, and that it has “no reason to believe that the issues that have now arisen in those proceedings will have any impact on the OFT’s civil case (save possibly as regards Virgin Atlantic's immunity), as this concerns the conduct of the companies involved rather than the alleged dishonesty of individuals”.
via Virgin could lose immunity from price-fixing penalties.
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O2 reveals iPad data plans – V3.co.uk
Apple is taking UK pre-orders for the iPad from today, with O2 the latest operator to officially announce monthly pricing options.
Prices for the Apple tablet start at £430 for the 16GB Wi-Fi version and rise to £699 for the 64GB Wi-Fi plus 3G option. Apple said that units will be made available on 28 May.
O2 said today that its iPad tariff options are available without long contracts, and include unlimited access to wireless networks from BT Openzone and The Cloud.
The operator added that it will provide additional features such as notifications when customers approach their data limits.
“We are truly excited to provide service for the iPad with Wi-Fi + 3G,” said O2 marketing director Sally Cowdry.
“We have worked closely with Apple to make sure customers get an excellent experience when using their iPad Wi-Fi + 3G on O2. Not only will it be quick and easy to buy value-for-money data access from the device, but customers will benefit from our great network and customer service and access to thousands of public Wi-Fi hotspots.”
O2 offers a pay-as-you-go service for £2 per day and two monthly tariffs, a 1GB plus unlimited Wi-Fi for £10 a month and 3GB plus unlimited Wi-Fi for £15 a month.
via O2 reveals iPad data plans – V3.co.uk – formerly vnunet.com.
Compliance comes calling | The Economic Times
Take an Indian conglomerate preparing to acquire a Belgian company. The last thing it needs to worry about is US criminal laws, right? Wrong — and indeed, buying the Belgian concern without thoroughly analysing its compliance profile could mean buying tens of millions of dollars in criminal liability.
The compliance challenges posed by the vigorous pursuit by the US of alleged Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) transgressors have been compounded as other countries, most prominently Germany and the UK, have adopted and begun active enforcement of anti-foreign corruption laws of their own.
On January 19, for example, the US unveiled 22 indictments of individuals, including UK citizen Pankesh Patel, as a result of an undercover operation with FBI agents posing as sales agents offering to corruptly facilitate foreign contracts. Patel and 20 other defendants were handcuffed in front of their peers right on the floor of a Las Vegas trade show.
In his allegedly corrupt pursuit of defence contracts in Africa, Patel had meetings within the US, and sent paperwork in furtherance of the underlying scheme to the US. His indictment is an application of FCPA provisions catching foreign persons that take steps within the US to further overseas corruption.
For Indian companies that are issuers of US securities , no such actions within the US would even be required.
For our hypothetical Belgian marketing company, though not directly subject to the FCPA, it might have FCPA liability if it had corruptly carried out business operations for US companies, or sent dollar-denominated wire transfers for corrupt purposes.
Another trend worth noting for non-US companies is the expectation of active supervision on the part of senior corporate executives.
US enforcers have held executives at headquarters responsible for misconduct occurring in the field, on the basis that the executives failed to supervise far-flung personnel or failed to design internal controls to prevent misconduct.
Other countries are also raising the bar to prevent bribery. In part, this is due to diplomatic pressure from the US but also the efforts of the OECD and the UN, both of whom have sponsored conventions that are now in place mandating that their signatories take certain actions in the fight against corruption. India is party to the UN convention.
The Siemens case in which it paid a record settlement of $800 million in fines and disgorgement of profits was mirrored by a fine of equal magnitude paid to the German regulator.
UK bribery law escalates business risk of regional companies – Business Intelligence Middle East
The UK Bribery Act, enacted in the United Kingdom on 8 April 2010, is one of the most significant issues to affect businesses and increases the risk of doing business for regional companies.
The law applies not only to British nationals and UK companies but to any commercial organisations even if they carry on only “part of a business” in the UK.
Under the new rules, companies with UK operations will be criminally liable for bribery and corruption in their business, supply chain or sales channels irrespective of where the bribery offences take place.
The bribe does not need to be directed at a government official, the provision is triggered even if the bribe relates to business activities amongst private entities.
The law creates a new strict liability offence for any commercial organization which has a “close connection” with the UK for failing to prevent bribery, with the defense of showing that it has adequate (anti-bribery) procedures in place.
This is without any requirement for the prosecuting authority to show that any directors or partners were directly involved in the crime.
The maximum jail term for bribery is now 10 years and companies convicted will also face unlimited fines.
Although some of its features are similar to the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), this law is likely to have a bigger impact on regional businesses.
It uses UK standards of what constitutes bribery and disregards local custom and practice, unless the practice is permitted by written law. Unlike the FCPA, it also makes no allowances for small facilitation payments consistent with local culture.
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UK data watchdog to quiz Google on Streetview Wi-Fi database • The Register
Sharp criticism of Google in Germany has today prompted the UK's privacy watchdog to quiz the firm over data its Street View cars have collected about Wi-Fi networks.
Officials from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) will seek details and assurances about the practice.
A spokeswoman told The Register the ICO had been unaware the Street View fleet has been recording the MAC addresses and locations of Wi-Fi networks as they photograph national road netwoks – until its German counterpart launched an attack last week.
Peter Schaar, Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, was quoted as saying he was “horrified” by the data gathering exercise and demanding the Wi-Fi database be deleted.
The ICO spokeswoman said British regulators are interested in how the data is being processed and used by Google. If the firm were collecting data on the security settings of Wi-Fi routers, she said, it would be asked to give assurances about what it might do with that information.
“If it’s just to tell you there's a cafe nearby – fine,” she added.
In Germany, concerns have centred on claims that a national database of Wi-Fi MAC addresses or network names could prove a boon to authorities tracking online activity. Similarly, easy look-up of encryption standards on Wi-Fi routers might be useful to investigators, or criminals.
via UK data watchdog to quiz Google on Streetview Wi-Fi database • The Register.
Changes Coming: FCPA, Bribery Bill and OECD-Part III | Thomas Fox – JDSupra
At its April 7, 2010 meeting the United States Sentencing Commission approved amendments to its Sentencing Guidelines. The next day on April 8, 2010, the UK Bribery Bill received Royal Assent. These two events follow the December 9, 2009 release by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s (OECD) Recommendation for Further Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials, when the OECD marked the tenth anniversary of the entry into force of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.
These three releases, which comprise of two changes in the legal schemes by two of the world’s largest economic players and the proposal of one of the largest Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) dedicated to ending corruption across the globe portend significant changes in how companies will be structured and transact business going forward in the new decade. This is the third and final of three postings which have discussed the changes that companies, with any US or UK presence, will be required to implement. In the initial post we considered the changes to the US Sentencing Guidelines; we then discussed the changes required by the UK Bribery Bill; and in this third and final post in this series, we will end with the recommendations regarding facilitation payments as found in the OECD’s Recommendation for Further Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials.
via Changes Coming: FCPA, Bribery Bill and OECD-Part III | Thomas Fox – JDSupra.
Is the UK heading for US style litigation? | Evolution Legal
With the news that Lord Justice Jackson’s recommendations for small value road traffic accident injury claims are going to be implemented in England & Wales on the 30th April 2010, questions must be asked as to whether his recommendations are driving UK road users further down the path of US litigation methods.
Until 2001, if you had been injured in a road traffic accident (RTA) you simply made arrangements with a Solicitor to obtain compensation on your behalf. The question of costs was very rarely mentioned as it was an unspoken truth that the Solicitors expected to recover their costs in full from the negligent driver’s insurance company.
When Lord Woolf reformed the framework surrounding compensation claims in 2001, the system of No Win No Fee (NWNF) was introduced, which in theory allowed claimants to bring claims without the fear of accumulating large legal costs bills if they lost the claim, thus providing access to justice to individuals who previously may have been put off from claiming.
This access to justice was protected by the issuing of what was known as After the Event Insurance (ATE), an insurance policy that guaranteed that the legal costs would be paid in the event of the claim not succeeding.
In legal circles this type of arrangement is governed by a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) which in layman’s terms basically means, that the lawyer agrees to take the clients case on, work for free for the duration of the claim, irrespective of the length of the case, before ultimately getting paid their costs on a fixed fee regime, with the possibility of achieving a success fee, if indeed the claim succeeded (therefore the fees are paid conditional upon success in the case!).
Quite were this system of accessing legal services and obtaining compensation came from is a bit of a mystery now in 2010, although I’m sure that at the time it made some sense. In any event the system was introduced and has been utilised for 9 years until now, albeit utilised in what can only be described as a battlefield, as claimant lawyers and insurance lawyers have knocked lumps out of each other arguing as to the rights and wrongs of the system.
This battle has raged for 9 years and has now led to a further change in the legal framework surrounding these claims, from Conditional Fee Agreements (CFA’s) to Contingency Fee Agreements (COFA’s).
In the newly proposed regime, the claimant will now have to commit to giving his lawyer a percentage of his recovered compensation to contribute towards the lawyers costs in the event of a successful claim.
So if £2000 is recovered on a 20% COFA, the lawyer will deduct £200 from the compensation award to contribute towards their costs of acting for the client. This process is widely used throughout the United States and has been for very many years.
via Evolution Legal.
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Data left on old computers is a boon for scam artists | The Baltic Course
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Old computers and mobile phones that people have thrown away to be re-used or recycled are often not thought of again by their owners, but in fact they still may have very sensitive personal data on them that can often be worth a lot more to criminals than the recyclable materials contained in the device. On Thursday, the European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx, warned that the European Commission’s current proposal to recast an old directive on e-waste – the WEEE directive, for ‘waste electrical and electronic equipment’ – was focussing only on the environmental considerations of junking old equipment, and had entirely forgotten about the threat to data left on laptops and PCs by their original owners.
The commission’s proposal and the existing directive “focus solely on the environmental risks related to the disposal of e-waste,” said Mr Hustinx. “It does not take into account other additional risks to individuals or organisations that may arise from the operations of disposal, reuse or recycling of e-wast, in particular those related to the likelihood of improper acquisition, disclosure or dissemination of personal data.”
The supervisor went on to say that the amount of data storeable on such devices has accelerated rapidly in recent years, and so the threat of loss of such data at the point of recycling or re-using had also accelerated, reports LETA, referring to EUObserver.
“This may present a risk, greater than in the past, that those collecting the WEEE or selling and purchasing the used or recycled devices might become aware of any personal data stored within. Such data can often be sensitive or refer to large numbers of individuals,” Hustinx said.
The supervisor added that it was “urgent” that both stakeholders and the EU legislative process take into account this back-end risk to data privacy.
“[At] the final stage of the [electronic goods] life-cycle … while economically less valuable, they are likely to contain a large amount of personal data and therefore likely to have a high intrinsicvalue.”
“It would therefore be inconsistent to introduce the duty to put in place (sometimes costly) security measures in the ordinary course of processing operations of personal data and then simply omit to consider the introduction of adequate safeguards regarding the disposal of the e-waste,” the expert noted.
Hard drives can easily be salvaged and then sold on to organized criminals who then access the data held on the drives, the personal files left on the computers by the original owners, from information on their sex lives to credit card numbers, and account information.
“In view of such risks, the supervisor emphasises the importance of adopting appropriate security measures at every stage of the processing of personal data, including during the phase of disposal of devices,” the EU data protestion specialist pointed out.
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Changes Coming: US Sentencing Guidelines, UK Bribery Bill and the OECD on Facilitation Payments | Thomas Fox – JDSupra
At its April 7, 2010 meeting the United States Sentencing Commission approved amendments to its Sentencing Guidelines. The next day on April 8, 2010, the UK Bribery Bill received Royal Assent. These two events follow the December 9, 2009 release by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s (OECD) Recommendation for Further Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials, when the OECD marked the tenth anniversary of the entry into force of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.
These three releases, which comprise of two changes in the legal schemes by two of the world’s largest economic players and the proposal of one of the largest Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) dedicated to ending corruption across the globe portend significant changes in how companies will be structured and transact business going forward in the new decade. This article will discuss the changes that companies, with any US or UK presence, will be required to implement. The initial post will be on the changes to the US Sentencing Guidelines; we will then consider the changes required by the UK Bribery Bill; and we will end with the recommendation as found in the OECD’s Recommendation for Further Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials.
UK Bribery Bill Update | Thomas Fox – JDSupra
It has been reported that the UK Bribery Bill, introduced in March 2009, made it out of Parliament before the upcoming general election. The Bribery Bill is a significant departure for the UK in the area of foreign anti-corruption. It is significantly stronger than the FCPA. Many internationally focused US companies have offices in the UK or employ UK citizens in their world-wide operations. This legislation could open them to prosecution in the UK under a law similar to, but stronger than, the relevant US legislation.
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