At the International Bar Association’s annual conference in Toronto at the end of October 2025, Gary Hughes represented Britomart Chambers and, to an extent, the NZ legal bar as a whole, as speaker on several sessions.
Most notably he was invited to speak alongside Presidents of the Law Council of Australia, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, and the Federation of Canadian Law Societies on the impact that AML/CFT regulation is having on the profession. This was a very well-received breakfast forum with many law societies and bar associations from around the world in attendance taking close interest.
Gary was also involved in different cartel topics, where he is well-known as an expert:
- As co-chair of the IBA’s AML & Sanctions sub-committee, on topics such as use of Sanctions laws in the USA against organised crime drug cartels, and new developments in England such as the ‘failure to prevent economic crime’ legislation;
and
- quite distinct, anti-competitive bid-rigging cartels (of the Commerce Act kind) where Gary had acted in New Zealand’s first criminal cartel case (Maxbuild) in the High Court in December 2024.
He also spoke as a panellist on the highly topical and divisive issue of de-banking – the practice of banks terminating accounts and withdrawing facilities from those they deem higher risk. This excellent all-star session featured presenters from England, Switzerland, Holland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand on the topic “De-banking, De-risking, and available tools to challenge such decisions“
Many decent companies have been sent to the wall, or driven underground, or sent back 50 years to a cash-economy, by indiscriminate debanking. Some were high risk or had poor compliance, and may have deserved it. Many did not.
As it has turned out, New Zealand has quite a list of jurisprudence to contribute to this topic:
- E-Tranz
- Ink Patch
- Targa Capital
- Gloriavale
+ Plus a few more cases that Gary was involved in that may not have been public at the time.
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