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From the media it is easy to believe that the law does not provide a realistic remedy against fraudsters and that even if they are caught, the assets which they have whisked away will have disappeared into the ether. However, the recent success of lawyers representing the Salvation Army in recovering monies lost in international fraud demonstrates that the fraudsters do not always get the upper hand. Using an effective and at times innovative combination of ancillary orders to compel the disclosure of evidence and information and to freeze assets, Slaughter and May were able to retrieve for their client not only the $8.8m originally lost, but also $4.9m in interest and costs. This article looks at the legal background to the three principal types of order which were obtained — Norwich Pharmacal orders, Anton Piller orders and Mareva injunctions — and draws on the Salvation Army case to illustrate their use in practice.

The future workings of the Securities and Investments Board (SIB) and financial services regulation in general are a constant subject of debate. In May 1993 following his review of the SIB's operations, Andrew Large, its chairman, concluded that the ‘SIB and the regulators need to improve the system's effectiveness and confidence in it, by a more active and formal exercise of the SIB's leadership and by achieving greater transparency for the system’.

An interest rate swap is an agreement between two parties by which one party (‘the fixed rate payer’) agrees to pay the other (‘the floating rate payer’) interest on a notional principal sum at a fixed rate over a certain period. The floating rate payer agrees to pay the fixed rate payer interest on the same notional sum at a fluctuating rate determined by reference to a market rate such as the six‐month London Inter‐Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR). Often the fixed rate payer will make an upfront payment to the floating rate payer with the result that the rate of interest payable by the fixed rate payer is reduced.

Discusses the visions of “global villages”, “borderless worlds” and “towers of Babel” which, according to the visionaries of our day, we are heading towards, enhanced by the rapid development of communications and information technologies. Explores the shortcomings of these metaphors and the visions conveyed by them. Considers the means by which alternative metaphors could be constructed in an effort to make sense of how information technology‐supported globalization will re‐shape the world in which we live.

Information is power — so it has been said — and nowhere has this statement been realised more significantly than in the banking industry. IT and banking in the 1990s and going forward to the next millennium are tightly bonded. It is now more difficult to determine whether business drives technology or the other way round. Given this scenario, one of the most important facets of managing IT in a bank is that of information security.

Section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1987 abrogates the right to silence since a suspect is required to answer questions in pre‐trial investigations by the SFO, although the answers are inadmissible as evidence unless proceedings are brought under s. 2(14) for giving false information or by s. 2(8), where the individual ‘makes a statement inconsistent with it’. In a previous article, the writer has considered the necessity and effectiveness of s. 2 powers. It is also instructive to analyse the conceptual basis of s. 2 powers since this will aid in the interpretation of statutory ambiguities and will allow the courts to have a uniformity of approach when seeking to resolve the statutory ambiguities. The conceptual basis is also important as concerns the resolution of where the line lies between the effective investigation of offences pursuant to s. 2 and the rights of the individual subject to such questioning. A critical examination of the above issues demands steering a careful course between normative rules and theory: in this area above all others it is impossible and undesirable to divorce one from the other.

Gone are the days when a bank could concentrate on providing a reliable service to its customer, and maintain that as part of that service it could guard the confidentiality of all information learnt in the course of the customer's banking. Formerly, a customer could be relatively confident that information about his or her business affairs would not be disclosed save in fairly limited circumstances, and the bank would not trouble itself as to how these affairs were conducted. Current legislation and regulation requires a bank to be aware of the commercial background to its clients' dealings and, in certain circumstances, to take steps to report criminal conduct or to account to third parties.

The short answer is no. Notable examples of anti‐corruption laws are available. But there is probably no single example that one would elevate to a definitive universal model. This short briefing will focus first on the multilateral efforts of the Organization of the American States (OAS) against corruption and secondly, on the new anti money‐laundering legislation of the Bahamas with references to other major countries, as another perspective apart from the perspectives of other regions.

Enforcement of regulatory controls has traditionally been left to the criminal law. In the last 15 years there has been an increasing interest in using civil remedies for this purpose. Most of the attention has been on financial services, but there have been recent developments in the UK planning system, which provide interesting parallels.

In most jurisdictions a suspect has the right to remain silent during criminal proceedings and he cannot be penalised for making false statements. This is loosely known as the ‘ban on self incrimination’ and is regarded as an important factor in due process protection of individuals subject to criminal proceedings. The right to silence applies only to the stage of criminal proceedings, and up to date it has surprisingly not been seriously debated. A criminal may have caused individuals and society major loss, damage or suffering; in principle one would expect that he would be obliged to assist in the clearing‐up of the case, particularly if this could ameliorate or repair the negative consequences of the crime. But this is not the way it is looked at. The suspect is under pressure, and must not be faced with the choice of lying or confessing.