The Attorney General v The Jamaican Bar Association

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

The Privy Council considered whether aspects of Jamaica's anti-money laundering Regime (under POCA, as extended to attorneys via the 2013 Attorneys Order) unconstitutionally violated rights to privacy, liberty and freedom from search under the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. The Jamaican Bar Association challenged provisions including GLC regulatory inspection powers (s 91A), suspicious transaction reporting (s 94) and tipping-off prohibitions (s 97). The Board held the Regime did not derogate from legal professional privilege (which remained protected), did not infringe the right to liberty, and did not confer coercive search and seizure powers (inspections require consent). While the Regime did infringe attorney-client confidentiality (a lesser aspect of privacy than LPP), this infringement was demonstrably justified under the Oakes proportionality test given the importance of combating money laundering. The appeals by the Attorney General and General Legal Council were allowed and the Full Court's order restored. This is not a lawyer-discipline decision; no individual lawyer was sanctioned and no dishonesty findings were made.