Asian Legal Review

A mining company under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has been granted the right to appeal a High Court decision over its rights to litigation privilege.

Malaysia has asked Interpol to try to locate a Malaysian financier for questioning over his suspected involvement in a multibillion-dollar scandal at state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), the deputy prime minister said on Monday.
The US Justice Department is seeking to seize US$1.7 billion in assets that it said were bought with misappropriated funds from 1MDB, according to dozens of civil lawsuits filed by the department in the past two years.
The assets include a private jet, a…

Philippine troops on Sunday were battling a final group of about 30 pro-Islamic State group militants who were surrounded in one building with all their hostages gone as a nearly five-month siege neared its end in southern Marawi city, a military official said.
Army Colonel Romeo Brawner said troops were aiming to end the crisis before midnight on Sunday.
He said the battle area was around a two-floor building near Lake Lanao where the firefight continued to rage at noon.
“Our government…

Myanmar police have seized more than US$5 million worth of methamphetamine pills in the north of violence-racked Rakhine state this month, an officer said Sunday.
Millions of the caffeine-laced meth tablets were intercepted in Maungdaw district, the centre of an army-led crackdown that has driven more than half a million Rohingya Muslims to flee across the border into Bangladesh in just two months.
Myanmar troops poured into the area in late August to launch a counteroffensive against Rohingya…

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte says he will shoot criminals himself, while warning he may bring police back to the front lines of his deadly war on drugs.
Duterte made the comments late on Friday following his announcement on October 11 to withdraw the police from his anti-drugs war after they were accused of rights abuses in killing thousands of people while following his orders to eradicate illegal drugs in society.
He replaced them with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA),…

A new documentary is set to stir fresh debate over one of Asia’s most enduring mysteries: what happened to Jim Thompson, Thailand’s legendary silk king.
The former American intelligence officer turned textile tycoon went for a walk in the Malaysian jungle 50 years ago and never returned. Despite a massive search, no trace of Thompson was ever found. One of the most prominent Westerners in Asia simply vanished.
Theories abound: he was killed by a tiger; he got lost and perished in…

Laws that place restrictions on the ‘profiling’ of individuals do not just apply to data processing completed entirely automatically, EU data protection authorities have said.

A local authority has been held vicariously liable for the abuse of a woman by two sets of foster parents she was placed with as a child, despite not being negligent in its selection or supervision of the foster parents.

Off-grid generating capacity across the power sector in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is predicted to almost triple in 2022 to 3,000 megawatts, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

If Kim Jong-un suddenly dies, don’t ask me: CIA chief Pompeo
The US Central Intelligence Agency thinks North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is a rational actor who is focused on staying in power and “waking up in his own bed” each day. But if Kim should suddenly not show up for work, there is no point asking US spy chief Mike Pompeo about it. “If Kim Jong-un should vanish, given the history of the CIA, I’m just not going to talk about it,” he said at a defence…