Asian Legal Review

By Sam Hurley A New Zealand Olympic great and politician was the target of an alleged bank fraud scheme. Dick Quax has been named in court documents alongside his wife Roxanne Bakke as the complainants in a criminal case currently before the Manukau District Court. The silver medal-winning Olympic runner confirmed to the Herald he has been in contact with investigating police after an electrician was charged with using bank cheques in Quax and Bakke’s names. James Alexander…

Traces of a nerve agent used to murder the half-brother of North Korea’s leader were found on the clothes of two women on trial for assassinating him, a chemist testified Thursday. His testimony is the first evidence directly linking the women to the poison VX which was used to kill Kim Jong-nam as he waited at a crowded airport in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong are accused of smearing VX on Kim’s face in February in a…

The European Commission has decided that tax rulings given by Luxembourg granted “undue tax benefits” to online retailer Amazon of around €250 million which breach EU state aid rules.

A prominent Cambodian opposition lawmaker has fled the country after being warned by government officials that she faced arrest for links with the party president’s alleged plot to overthrow the government.
Mu Sochua, who also served as deputy president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), left Cambodia on Tuesday, a day after Prime Minister Hun Sen warned of strong action against any others who may have been involved in the alleged plot. She had received an arrest warning from a…

The last time Bali’s Mount Agung erupted in 1963, more than 1,700 people died. Pyroclastic flows, a fast-moving mixture of gas and volcanic matter, devastated the Indonesian villages around the sacred mountain. The only place spared was the Mother Temple of Besakih, which the lava missed by metres.
Since September 21, fears of a similar catastrophe have gripped the island, causing panicked villagers to flee. Nearly 150,000 evacuees are scattered across 471 relief centres.
On October 1,…

The Intellectual Property Office has published a suite of new material for universities and colleges, aimed at helping students to better understand the relevance of intellectual property (IP).

Six months after signalling its intention to raise legal smoking age in Singapore from 18 to 21, the Government put it in motion, tabling a bill to change rules, which it had said will be phased in over a few years. With a World Health Organisation report citing that those who do not start smoking before 21 are unlikely to do pick up the habit, Singapore has been mulling over raising the legal age for the last few years. The commitment came during the Ministry of Health’s (MOH)…

Every day, South Korea’s Unification Ministry sends officials to the border village of Panmunjom to call North Korea at 9am and 4pm. For more than 18 months, the North hasn’t picked up.
As North Korea steps up its nuclear weapons tests and threats, the Unification Ministry, dedicated to improving relations with the North and eventual peaceful reunification, faces an almost existential crisis.
Not too long ago the ministry was one of Seoul’s most powerful departments. It had…

Northern Ireland has implemented new legislation which brings a public interest test into its rules on whistleblowing, bringing its rules into line with GB law.

The American supercarrier USS Ronald Reagan arrived in Hong Kong on Monday morning amid tensions over North Korea’s nuclear programme. The warship’s strike group commander, Rear Admiral Marc Dalton, said the carrier would stay in the city for four to five days before heading for “scheduled operational training”. Trump tells Tillerson he’s wasting his time negotiating with North Korea’s ‘Little Rocket Man’ South Korean media reported on…