Many people celebrated Guy Fawkes Day on Nov. 5. Meanwhile, the government was preparing to launch what it may have hoped would be a legal rocket of its own on the following day — the Home Office's long-awaited guidance on the new offense of failure to prevent fraud, or FTPF, as contained in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, or ECCTA.
Expectations were high that the guidance would be, if not explosive, at least a display of the government's commitment to prosecuting corporate fraud.
However, the guidance is more of a damp squib than a rocket, in that it goes little further than setting out broad suggestions for steps companies may wish to take in order not to fall foul of the new offense — suggestions that the vast majority of in-house counsel and law firms will have already anticipated. The guidance constitutes a perfunctory tick in the remaining box left by the ECCTA and begs more questions than it answers.
This article examines the extent to which the guidance signals that the government and the Serious Fraud Office, for now, intend to focus on low-hanging fruit and encourage companies to self-police, rather than to pursue allegations of fraud to trial. We will also summarize some practical immediate steps companies and their lawyers can take.
Guidance to organisations on the offence of failure to prevent fraud.
This article was first written for and published by Law360 on 22 November 2024, to read the full article click here. (£)
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