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英国内幕交易案例与制度分析(5)

2015-03-07 01:44
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[1]周正庆主编. 证券知识读本[M]. 北京：中国出版社，1998
[2]张明澍 编. 英国公司法经典案例[M]. 北京：出版社，1998
[3]卞耀武主编. 英国证券发行与交易法律[M]. 北京：法律出版社，1999

鉴于自己学识的浅显，对原文的理解会出现差错，会有很多偏颇，现附上英文原文，希看读者予以指正。
附英文原文：
Re an Inquiry under the Company Securities (Inside Dealing) Act 1985 [1988] 1 All ER 203 (House of Lords)
Warner, a financial journalist, had published two articles appeared to be based on first-hand information about confidential decision within a government department. Inspectors, who had been appointed to investigate suspected inside dealing based on the same information, required Warner to reveal his sources so that they could trace the Crown servant responsible for the leaks ; but he refused, claiming that as a journalist it was necessary for him to treat his sources as confidential. inspectors referred the matter to the court, asking that Warner be dealt with as if he had been in contempt of court (Financial Services Act 1986 s 178). The House of Lords ruled that Warner was bound too answer the inspectors’ question. [Subsequently he was fined $20,000 for contempt, having persisted in his refusal. The fine was paid by the news*** for which he worked.]
LORD GRIFFITHS delivered an opinion in favour of the inspectors.
LORD OLIVER OF AYLMERTON: My Lords, I have had the advantage of reading in draft the speech delivered by my noble and learned friend, Lord Griffiths I entirely agree that, for the reasons which he has given s10 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 is not directly applicable to a reference to the court under s178 of the Financial Services Act 1986.I also agree, however, that, even though not directly applicable, s10 is indicative of a general policy which should, on such a reference, be applied by way of analogy. Thus the essential question raised by this appeal is whether ,it being accepted that unless the information sought can be brought within one or other of the exceptions mentioned in s10 Mr. Warner has a reasonable excuse for declining to disclose it, it is information which is ‘necessary…for the prevention of …crime’.
Like my noble and learned friend, I have found myself unable to accept that the expression ‘prevention of …crime’ in s10 of the Act of 1981 is to be construed in the narrow sense for which Mr. Kentridge has contended. Clearly, in enacting s10, Parliament was enunciating a public policy for the protection of a journalist’s or author’s sources of information. Equally clearly, in providing for exceptional circumstances in which that protection should be overridden, it did so on the footing that those exceptions would have some practical application. The narrow construction contended for would, as it seems to me, largely deprive the exception of any useful content at all, for it is difficult to imagine circumstances in which a court or tribunal would be concerned to investigate a particular anticipated crime. The words must bear a wider meaning than that and must, I think, at least embrace the detection and prosecution of crimes which are shown to have been committed and where detection and prosecution could sensibly be said to act as a practical deterrent to future criminal conduct of a similar type. I do not, therefore, for my part doubt that a disclosure required to enable persons shown to have been engaged in a criminal activity to be identified and prosecuted is a disclosure required for ‘the prevention of …crime’. At the same time it has to be borne in mind that the protection against disclosure is not lightly to be cast aside and that the conditions required for its removal have to be positively established to the satisfaction of the court. If there is danger that the exception may be deprived of any useful content by too narrow an interpretation of the protection itself being attenuated to an unacceptable degree if the need for positive establishment of those requirements is too lightly regarded. What has chiefly concerned me in the instant appeal is whether this onus has been sufficiently discharged by the evidence filed on behalf of the inspectors. In my judgment, however, it has only narrowly been discharged and I am concerned that it should not be thought that the protection afforded by the Act can be overcome merely by a ritualistic assertion on affidavit that particular information is required for the prevention of crime. Obviously the court will pay a proper regard to the views of things, know than anyone else the stage which their inquiries have reached and what is needful for their successful prosecution. But it cannot, in my judgment, and must not be thought to be sufficient dimply to say that the inquiry upon which the body is engaged is one which has as its object the detection and prevention of crime and that, because a deponent says that certain information is required for the purpose of the inquiry, it therefore follows inexorably that the information is necessary for ‘the prevention of…crime’. The court must, in my judgment, be presented at least with sufficient material to enable it to exercise an independent judgment on the extent of the need.