Failure of Country Care criminal-cartel trial points to future challenges for Australian enforcer

MLex Market Insight

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4.9 • 9 Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

This week’s failure by Australian prosecutors to secure a conviction in the first criminal-cartel trial in over 100 years spells trouble for the country’s competition enforcer, which investigated the case. The Country Care prosecution has been widely regarded as a dry run for next year’s criminal-cartel trial targeting some of the world’s largest and best resourced banks. Also on the podcast this week, the death by a thousand cuts of Indonesia’s highly regarded anti-corruption agency.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, welcome to Mlex's podcast. Every week we have a chat about the top regulatory stories that are making waves with the assistance of our team of reporters in every corner of the world.
0:22.7	My name is James Panicki. I'm Mlex's Asia Pacific Senior Editor, and we've got a lot to get through
0:28.3	today. In just over 15 minutes time, we'll be crossing to Jakarta for a most incredible story,
0:34.4	the death by a thousand cuts of Indonesia's anti-corruption and force at the KPK.
0:40.2	The agency has dealt with external enemies before, but this time it appears that the enemy is within.
0:46.9	These are extraordinary developments, and our correspondent, Jet Damaso, is standing by to
0:53.4	have a chat. But let's kick things off this
0:56.0	week with a courtroom drama that has been years in the making. Earlier this week, 11 jurors
1:02.2	in the southeastern Australian city of Melbourne returned a not guilty verdict in the first jury
1:08.2	trial involving competition offences in the country's recent history.
1:12.4	In fact, it was the first criminal cartel prosecution since the early 1900s.
1:17.7	What's significant about the country care verdict in the Federal Court of Australia
1:21.8	is what it tells us about a much larger criminal cartel trial scheduled for next year in Sydney involving three
1:29.3	banks, A&Z, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup, with a high-profile immunity witness as well, J.P. Morgan.
1:36.4	What's at stake here is the ability of federal prosecutors to bring charges under the country's
1:41.6	2009 criminal cartel legislation, and that's why M-Mex has
1:46.0	been covering the case in such detail since it first appeared in a lower court in Melbourne
1:50.8	some three years ago now. Our senior reporter covering Australia and New Zealand, Laurel Henning,
1:56.5	is based in Sydney, but has made Melbourne her second home of late and I'm in the slightly unusual position
2:02.3	of having done quite a bit of reporting on this as well purely because I'm based here in
2:07.3	Melbourne so I'll be chiming in where appropriate from time to time. Laurel is with us now
2:13.8	and Laurel it might be best for you to tell us something about the background of this
	...

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