This is what the Supreme Court decided in Crown Prosecution Service v Aquila Advisory Ltd [2021] UKSC 49, an English case involving a Jersey company.
Many if not all legal systems will have some permutation of the rule that no person should benefit from his or her own wrongdoing. Deployed as the illegality defence this means, for example, if A sues B to enforce payment in relation to the sale of illegal drugs, it is a defence for B to say that the sale is illegal and therefore it cannot be enforced. English law (as applied to the Aquila case) and Jersey law are no exception and take a similar approach to each other.
So, how could the Court uphold the company’s claim to own the proceeds of the crime? The answer is that (on the facts of the case, at least) it was not the company’s crime. It was the directors’.
Click here to download the full article:
https://lnkd.in/dgsJ39Rh or download the full case file from https://lnkd.in/dUfXvux2
You can also download a South African booklet which provides insight into how creditors may hold errant directors of companies personally liable for the debts of their companies, in terms of our Companies Act:
https://www.werksmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Directors-liaibility.pdf
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