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29 March 2024 / Sir Max Hill KC , Hannah Thorpe , Alex Tivey
Issue: 8065 / Categories: Features , Commercial , Company , Fraud
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Corporate criminal liability: a wider scope?

New legislation demands better corporate behaviour. Sir Max Hill KC, Hannah Thorpe & Alex Tivey explain what this means in practice
  • Discusses the expansion of the failure to prevent fraud offence across all economic crime, its application to large organisations, and the redefinition of the identification principle to include senior managers.
  • Describes the increasing use of civil enforcement methods to recover the proceeds of crime, alongside greater use of deferred prosecution agreements.
  • Gives practical guidance on reasonable prevention measures.

Corporate criminal liability has existed in some legal jurisdictions for decades. In England and Wales, there have been legislative efforts to expound this doctrine. But corporate criminal liability, particularly in England and Wales, has been patchy as to scope and as to the success of legislative reform. Things are changing now. Corporate criminal liability has expanded from niche origins in bribery, corruption and money laundering, to encompassing all economic crime. Together with a coming together of civil and criminal enforcement measures by regulators, investigators

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NEWS
Calls to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 have been renewed, with the Bar Council arguing the current threshold criminalises children too early and risks pushing them towards lifelong offending
The legal profession's AI challenge extends far beyond fabricated case citations, according to a warning about the next phase of technological risk
Law firms should use the transition period before the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) assumes anti-money laundering (AML) supervision to strengthen governance and compliance, experts have warned
Cross-border disputes increasingly demand creative approaches to gathering evidence, with litigators needing to look beyond traditional letters of request
A Court of Appeal ruling has clarified the distinction between contracts of 'indefinite' and 'perpetual' duration, with potentially significant implications for commercial drafting
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