The Court held that prosecuting an accused for both a conspiracy to dishonestly cause a loss to the Commonwealth (s 135.4(5) Criminal Code (Cth)) and a conspiracy to deal with proceeds of crime (ss 11.5/400.3 Criminal Code (Cth)) arising from the same overall scheme does not constitute an abuse of process, even where the proceeds of crime charge relies on the predicate conspiracy offence as the source of the 'proceeds'. Applying Pearce v R, the Court held that where each offence contains at least one element not present in the other, the overlap does not render the prosecution abusive. The Court interpreted the 'separate act of criminality' language in Nahlous v R as referring to distinct elements of the offences, not a broader concept, and distinguished sentencing-stage double punishment concerns from pre-trial abuse of process arguments.
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