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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
The Attorney General, Ellie Reeves KC MP, and Solicitor General, Andy Slaughter KC MP, marked the 25th anniversary of Pro Bono Week by joining lawyers, charities, students and parliamentarians at events celebrating voluntary legal work
A polished legal defence may owe more to artificial intelligence than legal merit—and creditors risk paying the price in delay and expense
Witness evidence can be compromised by AI before a solicitor sees the draft, leaving safeguards focused on authorship incomplete
Should a conviction stand when a later ruling reveals that the law underpinning it was wrong? The answer exposes a clash between finality and justice
Possession claims are entering a new digital era, with procedural traps awaiting practitioners who assume familiar rules still govern every step
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