Negotiating a brave new world: Fraud and risk in modern commercial law

• Main Author: PHANG, Andrew B.L.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2024
• Subjects: Commercial Law
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/4488; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sol_research/article/6446/viewcontent/9781509970759_Fraud_and_Risk_in_Commercial_Law_01.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

We live in a brave new world. Much of what was once the stuff of fiction has now become reality. In particular, we have witnessed technological advances the like of which we would not even have begun to contemplate even at the turn of the second millennium. No one has been exempt – not even this mid-sexagenarian. Now, almost a quarter of a century on, we have to take stock of the double-edged sword that is technology. Indeed, technology has – unfortunately – facilitated fraud in a manner and on a scale that we have never witnessed before. With technology has come globalisation and internationalisation. The worldis a much smaller place. From a physical standpoint, we are oft en just hours away from each other, notwithstanding being thousands of miles distant. With the Covid-19 pandemic, technology enabled interaction to continue even when physical interaction was precluded. That we are present here is testimony to the sea changes that I have just mentioned. Th e present conference is a timely one because it examines, amongst other issues, the legal impact of both globalisation and technology on fraud and risk in commercial law. As already mentioned at the outset, fraud, in particular, has been facilitated in an especially unfortunate manner and it is therefore no surprise that many of the papers in today’s conference address this issue in a myriad of various commercial contexts.