The Ministry of Justice says it will be consulting on plans to extend the scope of the criminal offence of a corporate “failing to prevent” beyond bribery and tax evasion, to other economic crimes.
Apparently, police and other law enforcement agencies can struggle to prosecute corporations for money laundering, false accounting, and fraud under existing common laws and the consultation will seek views and evidence to assess whether changes in the law could allow the courts to more effectively prosecute corporate economic crime.
The consultation follows the recent announcement by the Prime Minister to bring forward a criminal offence for corporations who fail to stop their staff facilitating tax evasion and two recent prosecutions for the offence of failure of a commercial organisation to prevent bribery on its behalf.