House of Lords

Published May 19, 2008

Regina v Green

Before Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, Baroness Hale of Richmond, Lord Carswell and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood

Speeches May 14, 2008

The Drug Trafficking Act 1994, in giving effect to the United Kingdom’s obligations under the Vienna Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances 1988 and the Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds of Crime 1993, fell to be construed without regard to legislation in other countries which had chosen to give effect to those obligations in a different way.

The House of Lords so held in dismissing an appeal by Mark Green from the order of the Court of Appeal (Lord Justice Moore-Bick, Mr Justice David Clarke and Mrs Justice Swift) (The Times June 15, 2007) upholding a confiscation order made against him under the 1994 Act by Judge Steiger, QC.

Mr Tim Owen, QC and Mr Andrew Bodnar for Green; Mr David Perry, QC and Mr Duncan Penny for the Crown.

LORD BINGHAM, giving the opinion of the committee, said that Mr Owen had argued that sums retained by the appellant’s codefendants should have been deducted from his confiscation order, pointing out that the confiscation regimes of Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada did not sanction recovery of the same sum from different offenders.

However, for the reasons given in R v May (The Times May 15, 2008) where two or more defendants obtained control of property jointly, each of them had obtained the whole of it within the meaning of the 1994 Act.

In construing a United Kingdom statute the meaning of which it judged to be clear, the committee could not be influenced by the legislation of other countries, even if those countries had chosen to give effect to common international obligations in a different way.

Solicitors: Stokoe Partnership, Leytonstone; Crown Prosecution Service, Special Crime Division.

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