Regulatory

TurksLegal has a leading team of regulatory lawyers with experience acting for both commercial enterprises operating under our strict regulatory systems and for regulatory agencies.

Our lawyers have over two decades’ experience in regulatory matters pertaining to:

  • Corporate and professional misconduct.
  • Administrative review of government decision making including judicial and merits review.
  • Investigations into breaches of laws ranging from price fixing to banking regulation.
  • Advising on and appearing in penalty proceedings.
  • Investigations into professional standards arising under common law and professional standards, codes and guidelines.
  • Commissions of Inquiry.
  • Conducting and assisting clients to appear at investigative hearings, including the attendance of witnesses under compulsion.
  • Contraventions of statutory schemes.
  • Advising on the use of evidence obtained under compulsion and derivative evidence.
  • Compliance advice and training.
  • Licensing disputes.
  • Public health and environmental investigations and prosecutions.
  • White-collar crime.

 

With a background as commercial litigators, our regulatory lawyers are keen strategists and have a reputation for negotiating outcomes and agreement on facts, evidence, and, where possible, penalty.  They are conscious of the cost to business of compliance with Australian laws and the reputational harm that follows prosecution.  Many of the matters they have been involved in over the last 20 years are not the subject of reported decisions or outcomes because of their distinct skillsets as negotiators and their depth of understanding of regulatory objectives.

Some of the keys cases our lawyers have conducted include:

  • Conducting investigations on behalf various regulatory bodies, including health complaints on behalf of a government department and into potential breaches of corporate and consumer credit laws on behalf of ASIC.
  • Numerous prosecutions brought by professional regulatory boards, industry regulators, as well as corporate and consumer regulators. For example, see here. See also, here.
  • Assisting commercial clients in preparing for and appearing at Commissions of Inquiry.
  • Finalising the regulatory prosecution of Dr Jayant Patel with international consequences for his medical licence. See here.
  • Defending and upholding the regulatory decisions of State and Commonwealth government departments. For example, see here.
  • Assisting an international corporation with respect its licence to operate following the discovery of contamination, and 
  • Advising an international agribusiness manufacturer during a product recall and responding to an investigation and threatened prosecution by various consumer regulators. 

We frequently provide our clients and industry participants with access to training about developments in the conduct of regulatory investigations and proceedings.
 

Key Contact

Andrew Forbes

Partner

E: andrew.forbes@turkslegal.com.au

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