Tag Civil and criminal liability

The Former Sheriff of Wall Street is Back

Wall Street – and some of Asia’s markets as well – should really panic if New York’s voters give Eliot Spitzer (again) to troll through corporate records looking for wrongdoing – and if the name Jesse M. Unruh rings a bell.

Spitzer, the disgraced former New York governor and attorney general best remembered for his forced resignation five years ago after being revealed as “client #9” in the wake of a prostitution scandal, announced last week his return to the political spotlight by running for office – as the New York City Comptroller.

One would be forgiven for thinking the Harvard-trained lawyer – once considered in some quarters to be on his way to the White House – has gone low and cheap to run for a backwater auditing office best associated with pallid career politicians. But no, Spitzer the corporate scourge has other ideas.

You can find the entire column here.

While Attempting to Suppress Transparency

Paradoxically, even as the Hong Kong government is proposing far-reaching changes to the Companies Ordinance that would bring due diligence and investigations to a stop, officials are also quietly studying the possibility of introducing a Freedom of Information Act.

If that seems a contradiction, that’s because it is.

The Companies Ordinance amendments, either missed or ignored by the mainstream media when it was passed through the legislature earlier last year, will result in withholding from the public parts of the identification numbers and details of the residential addresses of company directors found in the Hong Kong company registration records – the very thing a freedom of information act is designed to facilitate.

Please read the full column here.