Update: Cayman Islands Confidential Relationships Law Now Repealed

By way of update to our eAlert of 16 May, we can report that with the gazetting and immediate entry into force of the Confidential Information Disclosure Law, 2016, the Confidential Relationships (Preservation) Law of the Cayman Islands has today been repealed.

The Confidential Relationships (Preservation) Law was originally enacted in the 1970s, when Cayman as a financial centre was in its infancy. In essence, all it did was to overlay criminal penalties on disclosures of confidential information that in most cases would have been actionable by civil proceedings in any event. However, in the 40 years of its existence, no-one was ever prosecuted, and the only provision that was commonly used was section 4, which enabled a person who intended or was being required to disclose confidential information in evidence in proceedings (whether in Cayman or elsewhere) to apply for the approval of the Court to do so. Nonetheless, its existence was often relied upon, in