Uyghur Group Wins Appeal Over NCA Refusal to Probe Slave Labour Cotton Imports

The Court of Appeal has quashed the National Crime Agency’s (NCA’s) refusal to investigate cotton imports that are potentially linked to Uyghur slave labour in China, saying the decisions were based on reasons that are “wrong as a matter of law.” Therefore, the NCA will have to reconsider whether to carry out an investigation under provisions of the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) 2002, the court said on Thursday. In their judgment, the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, Lord Justice Bean, and Lady Justice Andrews upheld the appellants’ submission that the Hight Court had not properly addressed the World Uyghur Congress’s (WUC’s) ground for challenge, and that NCA’s decision letter would be interpreted by the reasonable reader that it couldn’t open an investigation until specific criminal property and criminal conduct are identified, and criminal property would cease to be criminal property if they were passed through the hands of unsuspecting buyers....