Dear Law School,

First up, apologies for the delay in publishing November’s issue – and also for the fact that there are only three articles for this issue. We ran into some logistical and administrative problems. Nevertheless, we hope that you enjoy the articles still!

November’s issue is on white-collar crime. Despite its prevalence in many countries – and the fact that it is often glorified to no end in many movies, white-collar crime has only been thrown into the limelight again recently as a result of the Singapore Land Authority corruption case. White-collar crime is an interesting area mainly because it involves crimes perpetrated by wealthy executives – seemingly credible individuals you would least expect to become shackled criminals. Given the large sums of money involved in such crimes – as well as the fact that Singapore has often prided herself on having an extremely strong stance against corruption, the recent crimes thus beg the question as to what kind of measures (both punitive, and preventive) we really have in place in order to prevent this from happening again.

More importantly, another important issue that is being debated widely right now is the manner with which whistleblowers should be dealt with the law. Some have argued for protecting them in order to incentivise them to report any crimes happening – even if they were involved in it – whilst others have maintained the need for fairness and justice and therefore ensuring that they too are punished accordingly. How this will be dealt with by the courts in Singapore remains to be seen yet!

We hope you enjoy the articles – and the holidays!

The Power & The Glory: Political White-Collar Crimes – Nisha Rajoo
Whistleblowers – To Protect or Not? – Eugene Ang
Peering into Insider Trading – Hong Yanci

Alessa Pang
Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Singapore Law Review, AY 2010/11