In the ongoing Hua Wang Bank Berhad litigation, the Federal Court has granted an application for a suppression order to prohibit disclosure of the fact that the applicant gave evidence under compulsory examination to the Australian Crime Commission (“the ACC”), the contents of that evidence or any information that might enable the witness to be identified. It granted the application essentially on the basis that the activities of the ACC are subject to substantial secrecy requirements in order to encourage witnesses to speak the truth freely and that an interviewee has no choice as to whether he or she is examined, and is also required to answer questions even if they incriminated him or her.
In arriving at its decision, the Court also noted that it was insufficient to grant a suppression order merely on the basis of potential harm to a person’s reputation, but that in this case there was also a strong public interest to grant the application in view of, among other things, that it was not clear if or how information (which related to the “central place of management and control”) may be used by the Commissioner in the litigation. However, in view of this fact, and in the interests of balancing the “public” requirement of justice, the Court only granted interim suppression orders that would expire on Friday 8 November 2013.
(Hua Wang Bank Berhad v FCT (No 10) [2013] FCA 1024, Federal Court, Perram J, 10 October 2013.)
[LTN 197, 11/10/13]