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New Zealand Court of Appeal: Judgment in Controller and Auditor–General V. Sir Ronald Dawson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2017

Michael Bvers
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Extract

On February 16, 1996 the New Zealand Court of Appeal rendered judgment on three applications for judicial review arising out of what had come to be known in New Zealand as the “Winebox Inquiry”. The Inquiry began as the result of certain documents being tabled (in a winebox) before the New Zealand House of Representatives. It was alleged that the documents implicated several New Zealand companies in the evasion of New Zealand income tax by the use of the Cook Islands as a tax haven, and that the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department and Serious Fraud Office had been incompetent at the least in failing to detect and prevent the abuse.

Type
Judicial and Similar Proceedings
Information
International Legal Materials , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , May 1997 , pp. 721 - 743
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1997

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References

* Reproduced from New Zealand Law Reports, 1996, Volume 2, with the permission of the New Zealand Council of Law Reporting. The ellipses indicate omissions in the text. The Introductory Note was prepared for International Legal Materials by Michael Byers, Fellow, Jesus College, University of Oxford and Visiting Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg.

[Bruce Smith, Paul S. Hudson et al. v. Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, November 26, 1996, U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, appears at 36 I.L.M. 100 (1997); Hugo Princz v. Federal Republic of Germany, July 1,1994, U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, appears at 33 I.L.M. 1483 (1994); Letelier v. Republic of Chile, November 5, 1980, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, appears at 19 I.L.M. 1418 (1980), and Trendtex Trading Corporation v. Central Bank of Nigeria, January 13, 1977, Court of Appeal of England and Wales, appears at 16 I.L.M. 471 (1977).

1 These judgments (KPMG Peat Marwick and Others v. Sir Ronald Davison; Brannigan and Others v. Sir Ronald Davison) may be found at [1996] 2 N.Z.L.R. 278, 290, 319, 338

2 [1978] Q.B. 500, 528 (Queen's Bench), quoted by Lord Wilberforce at [1983] 1 A.C. 244, 269, [1981] 3 W.L.R. 328, 342, [1981] 2 All E.R. 1064, 1075, reviewed in 52 British Yb. Int'l L. 314-19 (1981) (House of Lords). The statement was subsequently quoted by Lord Goff (as he had become) in Kuwait Airways Corp. v. Iraqi Airways Co. at [1995] 1 W.L.R. 1147, 1157, [1995] 3 All E.R. 694,705, reviewed in 66 British Yb. Int'lL. 496-501 (House of Lords).

3 See, Kuwait Airways Corp. v. Iraqi Airways Co., id.; and Littrell v. United States of America (No. 2), [1995] 1 W.L.R. 82, [1994] 4 All E.R. 203, reviewed in 65 British Yb. Int'l L. 491-96 (1994) (Court of Appeal). The latter case was decided on the basis of English common law because it concerned visiting armed forces and proceedings concerning visiting armed forces are excluded from the 1978 State Immunity Act, c. 33, by section 16 of that Act.

4 See, e.g., Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law, 4th ed. 333-36 (1990); Australian Law Reform Commission, Report No. 24: Foreign State Immunity 26-28 (1984).

5 488 F.Supp. 665 (D.D.C. 1980), 19 I.L.M. 1418 (1980).

6 Id. at 673.

7 The FSIA is found at 28 U.S.C. §§ 1330, 1602-11 (1976). The first such case was Argentine Republic v. Amerada Hess Shipping Corporation, 488 U.S. 428 (1989), which did not concern a serious human rights violation, but which was nevertheless followed in Siderman de Blake v. Republic of Argentina, 965 F.2d 699 (9th Cir. 1992), which did.

8 See, e.g., Bruce Smith, Paul S. Hudson et al. v. Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, etc. (2nd Cir. 1996), 36 I.L.M. 100 (1997); Hugo Princz.v. Federal Republic of Germany, 26 F.3d 1166 (D.C. Cir. 1994), 33 I.L.M. 1483 (1994); Siderman de Blake v. Argentina, 965 F.2d 699 (9th Cir. 1992).

9 [1996] Times L.R. 192, reviewed in 67 British Yb: int'lL. (1996) (forthcoming) (Court of Appeal).

l0 See, e.g., Trendtex Trading Corp. v. Central Bank of Nigeria, [1977] 2 W.L.R. 356, 365-66, 388, [1977] 1 All E.R. 881, 890, 910-11, 16 I.L.M. 471 (1977), reviewed in48 British Yb. Int'lL. 353-62 (1976-77) (Court of Appeal); The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677,700 (1900); Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States (1987), § 111(1).

11 See, e.g., supra, note 3.

12 Pub. L. No. 104-132, § 221, 110 Stat. 1214, 1241. See Monroe Leigh, “1996 Amendments to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act with Respect to Terrorist Activities,” 91 AJ.I.L. 187 (1997), and 36 I.L.M. 759 (1997).