EU rules allowing individuals to request removal of negative information and articles on search engines raises serious due diligence concerns for businesses and accountants, warns Shanti Salas, vice president in strategy and diligence at Exiger
The scope and effect of the EU’s European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling on the ‘right to be forgotten’ relating to the listings of links from online searches provides increasing challenges to those interested in the quality of online investigative research and reputational due diligence.
The outcome of an appeal currently underway by Google in France’s Supreme Administrative Court has added piquancy. At stake in the latest appeal is the scope of the effect of a key ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in 2014 which resulted in the ‘right to be forgotten’.
The ‘right to be forgotten’ rule permits citizens and residents of the EU to petition search engines to delist links from search results, typically results connected with their names that are deemed ‘inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed’.
For b
