Asian Legal Review

Businesses can help shape the way a new testbed for “innovative products and services using personal data in innovative ways” is designed, according to the UK’s data protection authority.

Malaysian democracy icon Anwar Ibrahim has announced he will contest the Port Dickson parliamentary seat in the state of Negeri Sembilan in a move that, assuming he is successful, will pave the way for him to take over from Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
The news caps a remarkable turnaround in Anwar’s fortunes – it was not until after the general elections in May that he was granted a full royal pardon for his convictions of sodomy and corruption, charges he says were trumped up…

A Singapore DJ has filed a court challenge against a colonial-era law that bans gay sex in the conservative city state, his lawyers said on Wednesday, following India’s scrapping of similar legislation.
Johnson Ong Ming, 43, also known as DJ Big Kid, filed his challenge with the High Court on Monday, his lawyers said, just four days after India’s landmark ruling.
Under Section 377A of Singapore’s Penal Code, a man found to have committed an act of “gross indecency…

The growth of automation in financial advice has been slower than anticipated and risks identified earlier have not materialised, according to a new report from the three European supervisory authorities.

Indian Catholic sisters have broken ranks with the church by openly protesting in the streets of the Kerala state capital against a bishop accused of raping a nun.
The demonstrations started on Saturday and continued throughout the weekend in Thiruvananthapuram, fuelled by an incendiary press conference in which a politician questioned the account of the bishops’s alleged victim, a 46-year-old nun, and described her as a prostitute.
The nun lodged a complaint against bishop Franco…

Should the Philippine government withdraw tax concessions enjoyed by Japanese companies, many may go bankrupt or close their operations there, a top official of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the Philippines has warned.
“They do not want to expand operations here. It’s the first step for them,” Nobuo Fujii, vice-president of the organisation with 650 companies as members, told Kyodo News on Monday.
“Then the second step is to gradually withdraw,”…

Businesses promoting claims management services over the phone will need to ensure that recipients of their calls have opted in to receive them to avoid potential fines of up to £500,000 being imposed on them under new UK rules that have taken effect.

Pension compensation payable to employees of insolvent businesses by the UK’s Pension Protection Fund (PPF) cannot be capped at less than 50% of what the individual would have otherwise been entitled to, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled.

Japan’s “Twitter killer”, suspected of murdering and chopping up people he lured on social media, and storing their body parts in coolboxes, was charged Monday with nine counts of murder.
Takahiro Shiraishi, 27, has admitted to killing and butchering all nine of his victims – all but one of whom were women aged between 15 and 26.
Yoga ball murder trial: putting deadly gas in ball was ‘a crazy thing to do’
On the morning of Halloween last year, police…

A Singaporean court has ordered the return of S$15.3 million (US$11.1 million) linked to the indebted 1MDB Malaysian state investment fund.
Law firm Tan Rajah & Cheah said on Monday that the misappropriated funds were being transferred to a special 1MDB recovery bank account in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
It did not say how many individuals were involved.
The Malaysians hiding their Hermes and the ones flashing the cash
“Efforts to recover other unlawfully misappropriated…