Corporate Failure to Prevent Economic Crime

Proposals to extend to a broad range of economic crimes a version of the corporate failure to prevent offence in the Bribery Act 2010 have been gaining in momentum over the last few months. First proposed by the Director of the Serious Fraud Office last year, it seems to be an idea whose time has come with the recent revelations about HSBC’s Swiss subsidiary. Deferred prosecution agreements and Definitive Sentencing Guidelines already assume a commonality in corporate offending across bribery, fraud and money laundering. To bring the substantive law of corporate attribution in line would be rational and effective.