BCL’s Richard Reichman and Tom McNeill with 2 Bedford Row’s Barristers Eleanor Sanderson and Shauna Ritchie will be delivering a webinar in partnership with Lexology, 10th November, 05:00 – 06:00 PM BST, titled ”Defending regulatory investigations and prosecutions.”
Register for this webinar here through the Lexology website.
Here’s a brief description of the webinar’s topic:
Corporate criminal liability has been transformed in the past 15 years, partly to address the increased public demand for accountability for safety and ESG failings. In addition to the corporate manslaughter offence, traditional regulatory offences such as health and safety, fire safety, environmental and consumer protection offences are treated increasingly seriously, with fines rising dramatically, as well as the threat of imprisonment for company officers. The Grenfell tragedy has seen a radical shift in fire safety enforcement while the Environment Agency’s wide ranging investigations of water and sewerage companies, which have already seen one £90m fine, recently led the Environment Agency to call for fines to increase further and prison sentences for Chief Executives and Board members in the most serious pollution cases. Greenwashing is also firmly on regulators’ radars and future enforcement action inevitable.
To circumvent perceived difficulties caused by the ‘identification doctrine’, the ‘regulatory’ approach has been extended to economic crimes and further extensions are expected in the future, leading to increased regulatory risk for businesses. This is part of a general trend where corporates are now expected not only to do no wrong but to prevent others from doing wrong or face criminal sanction.
During this webinar, we will discuss certain key aspects of these developments, including:
- The changing regulatory landscape
- Developments in corporate criminal liability (including the Law Commission’s recent options paper)
- Particular risk areas for corporates
- Defending regulatory investigations and prosecutions
- Penalties for regulatory offences