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The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and development of corporate accounting regulation in Libya.

Questionnaire survey and semi-structured interview methods were used to collect data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with external auditors, financial managers, accounting academics and regulators.

This paper found general agreement that the accounting regulation of public corporations and banks is strongly influenced by the Libyan Commercial Code and the Income Tax Law. Although listed companies and the banking sector in Libya are required to comply with International Accounting Standards (IASs), the majority of them still comply with the US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP). Moreover, the conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that the enforcement of IASs through the Libyan Accountants and Auditors Association (LAAA), local auditors and the Libyan Stock Market has not achieved its purpose. The results also indicate that the accounting profession in Libya is still in its infancy and still lacks clear structure in order to develop corporate accounting practice and it appears to play only an important role in retaining external influences on the accounting practice. The empirical results of this research show that the Salter and Niswander (1995) criteria (longevity, setting exam and auditors’ opinion on companies’ financial reports) found that the level of professionalism in Libya is below the required standard.

This paper focuses on corporate accounting regulation and practices and the role of the LAAA in the development of corporate accounting in Libya. This paper, therefore, aims to contribute to the literature by examining the corporate accounting regulation in Libya and fills a gap in international accounting research.

This chapter assesses the impact of ethics laws at the state level in the U.S., focusing on laws that apply specifically to one category of public officials: legislators. I first discuss the positive contribution of ethics laws to the functioning of democratic government. I then turn to the costs of the laws, which are often subtle and counterintuitive. The discussion of the costs of ethics laws draws on a growing body of empirical evidence, and highlights the ways that legislation can have unintended and undesirable consequences.

The principle of offshore financial confidentiality is a controversial issue in offshore law. On the one hand, offshore jurisdictions view confidentiality in financial matters as an essential ingredient in the offshore industry which deserves to be protected. On the other, onshore states are increasingly hostile to confidentiality and have been willing to take drastic measures to undermine it.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the legislative framework that governs whistleblowing in the UAE.

The paper examines social perceptions and practical challenges related to the act of whistleblowing. It focuses on the effectiveness, limitations and implications of the current legal status of whistleblowing in the UAE.

The UAE does not have a unified legal framework that governs whistleblowing and whistleblower protections like in the case of the USA. Therefore, there is an urgent need for comprehensive federal regulations that will apply to all sectors across the entire UAE. Each emirate and economic zone can then model their whistleblowing regulations against the federal law to ensure consistency and uniformity in application. The UAE will also benefit from public awareness and education programs to address the conservative culture that discourages whistleblowing. Most importantly, corporate governance and culture are central to the success of existing laws considering the overreliance on organizations and employees.

The paper provides a robust and analytical discussion of the whistleblowing laws and regulations in the UAE to dissect current practices and implications for future practice.

This paper examines comparative aspects of Arab securities regulation. It provides a general introduction, overviews the aims of securities regulation and the UK regulatory framework, and outlines the obstacles facing equity financing under Shari'a and hindrances to effective Arab securities regulation. It accounts for the major macroeconomic reasons which have enhanced interest in Arab securities markets, examines lack of Arab rules on fraud, insider dealing and possible contractual remedies. It concludes with a case study shedding light on the term ‘securities’ as understood by Article 3 of the 1997 Jordanian Securities Act.

Throughout the history of commerce, individuals have searched for informational advantages that will lead to their enrichment. In a time of global capital markets, 24 hours a day trading opportunities, and a professional services corps of market experts, informational advantages are pursued by virtually every market participant. This paper examines one of the most vilified informational advantages in modern capital markets: insider trading. In the USA during the 1980s, insider trading scandals occupied the front pages of not only the trade papers, but also quotidian tabloids. Assailed for its unfairness and characterised by some as thievery, insider trading incidents increased calls for stricter regulation of the marketplace and its participants. In the aftermath of the spectacular insider trading litigation in the USA in the late 1980s, many foreign states began to re‐evaluate the effectiveness of their own regulatory structures. In large part, this reassessment was not the produce of domestic demand, but constituted a response to American agitation for increased regulation of insider trading.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role of customs and morality on financial crime control in developing countries, against the background of inherited foreign laws and international best practice.

The research is explanatory, descriptive and exploratory, relying extensively on existing anti-graft journals, text books, decided cases, constitutional provisions, statutory provisions and United Nation Conventions.

The research findings and analysis propose that the existing financial crime control measures in developing nations fail to consider local customs and circumstances in formulating anti-corruption policies and laws; consequently, a meaningful and effective financial crime control in developing nations, especially in Nigeria, requires the customs and culture to be examined and evaluated with a view to designing a pragmatic policies and laws.

The paper contributes practical options to observed lapses in the existing financial control laws, especially corruption. The paper will be valuable to African Governments, corporations and the academic community.

When the time comes to look back at the last two decades of the 20th century, a future historian would be forgiven for thinking we were almost obsessed with organised crime, corruption and money laundering. Of course, when one considers the ignominious fall from favour of so many world leaders, in circumstances where serious corruption was at least alleged, if not self‐evident, the exposure of rampant financial malpractice in intergovernmental organisations, the penetration of entire economic and political structures by, for what of a better notion, we describe as organised crime, then perhaps our historian's impression might not be too far from the truth. Although it is possible to find the odd comment in international meetings, about the serious implications of economic crime and the like, before the 1980s, these a few and far between. Most are related to complaints from developing countries about the unwillingness of developed countries to assist in the enforcement of exchange control laws. In fact, it was not until November 1980 that the Commonwealth, an organisation or rather association of states whose justification has increasingly been based on its ability to recognise and address problems related to small and relatively fragile economies, began to concern itself, at governmental level, with the implications of what appeared to be a growth in serious economic abuse. At the Commonwealth Law Ministers' Meeting in Barbados in that year, the ministers accepted the recommendations of a report, commissioned a year earlier by the then Director of the Commonwealth Secretariat's Legal Division, Mr Kutlu Fuad, and written by the present author, which led to the instigation of a Commonwealth programme against serious economic crime. It is interesting to note that certain Commonwealth governments had expressed concern during the 1970s not so much about abusive conduct on the part of conventional criminals, but on the part of those seeking to ‘bust’ the economic sanctions that had been imposed on Rhodesia and later South Africa. Indeed, it was claimed by some that, for example, South Africa was deliberately attempting to destabilise the economies of the ‘front‐line states’ through a programme of economic sabotage and crime. In those days, there was little talk, even in such organisations as ICPO‐Interpol, about the threat of organised crime. Terrorism, whether by individuals or by state agencies, was then considered to be a matter almost beyond the remit of traditional law enforcement agencies. It was much later that most came to recognise that organised crime and terrorist organisations may well be one and the same.

This paper aims to examine the framework for the regulation of crypto assets in Germany, the UK and Switzerland focusing on anti-money laundering (AML) laws. It comprehensively addresses the risks of crypto assets and the benefits along with the changes made to the existing laws to regulate cryptocurrency.

Qualitative data was analyzed to collect information for the case study and to challenge/examine the existing data and statistics.

The findings suggested that the AML laws are additionally modified to include the cryptocurrencies violations of the legislation, as it is the decentralized financial systems generating opportunities for crimes and terror financing. The moderate or mild laws were found in Switzerland following Germany and the UK has the most traditional and stringent laws of money laundering.

The paper has focused on the comparison of the three states in their AML laws comprehensively along with their attitude toward the crypto businesses.

This paper aims to critically analyse the transposition implications of Union Directive 2014/95. This Directive identified the need to raise the transparency of the social and environmental information provided by the undertakings to a similarly high level across all Member States.

The paper considers how the European Member States of the European Union (EU) have transposed Directive 2014/95 into their regulations. The focus is on the juridification of social accounting in the pursuit of creating an overlapping consensus through Habermas’s concept of internal colonisation. The paper uses qualitative content analysis to scrutinise the national laws that transpose Directive 2014/95, discussing both what has been accomplished and what can be achieved by the release of future legislative provisions.

Despite the aim of Directive 2014/95 to create a common language for disclosing non-financial information, this study shows an implementation gap among and between Member States and an inconsistent picture of the employment of this Directive. Its implementation in the 28 European countries was considered a process of colonisation in implementing Union directives among European undertakings. However, the implementation process, which exemplifies Habermas’s juridification, has failed due to the lack of balance between moral discourse and actions.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debates concerning the implementation of mandatory disclosure of environmental and social information in the EU Member States, promoting new directions for the EU’s democratic laws on social accounting. In addition, it offers an example of how internal colonisation only catalyses effects when moral laws are legitimised through the provision of procedures.