Webinar: Corporate Investigations – Recent Developments

Webinar: Corporate Investigations – Recent Developments

We are pleased to be teaming up with Mondaq on the 18th May 2023 to host a live webinar discussing the recent developments in corporate investigations and regulatory compliance. In this webinar, BCL’s John Binns, Tom McNeill and Anoushka Warlow will explore the recent approach of regulators to economic crime, supply chains, failure to prevent notices, deferred prosecution agreements, and the proceeds of crime.

To register for this webinar, please visit the Mondaq website.

The webinar will cover the following:

Recent years have seen an increased political and public demand for corporate accountability in the UK, including for new ways to hold organisations criminally liable for wrongdoing committed on their behalf or which otherwise is judged to have been preventable. With traditional legal principles generally requiring proof of personal fault, excepting in limited ‘regulatory’ contexts, this has meant a radical reshaping of corporate criminal liability. This includes by:

  • extending the ‘regulatory’ approach to economic crimes;
  • seeking new ways to make organisations responsible for other social harms, including those connected to supply chains; and
  • among law enforcement agencies, maintaining a focus on corporate offending often at the expense of those individuals alleged to have committed the wrongdoing.

The upshot includes the paradoxical effects of punishing organisations for wrongdoing which they cannot prevent; incentivising commercially-minded organisations to enter settlement agreements in relation to conduct which may not be criminal; hanging innocent individuals out to dry in the rush to agreeing corporate settlements; while simultaneously reducing the chance of successfully prosecuting individuals who may actually commit wrongdoing.

Against this background, we will be discussing recent developments in corporate investigations with a particular focus on:

  • Failure to prevent offences and the anticipated introduction of a new failure to prevent fraud offence
  • The latest on deferred prosecution agreements, including consideration of Tetris Bluu
  • Supply chains and the proceeds of crime
  • Funding and resourcing of law enforcement
  • Other recent developments

Register for our webinar

John Binns is a top-ranked lawyer for both individual and corporate clients in various aspects of financial crime (such as bribery, fraud, money laundering, sanctions, and tax evasion) in which the liabilities and risks of the two types of client often conflict and interact with each other. He has written and presented extensively on the increasing risks for corporates, including from ‘failure to prevent’ offences.

Tom McNeill is a partner at BCL Solicitors LLP with a dual practice covering regulatory enforcement and financial crime. Tom predominantly represents companies in serious, complex and high profile matters ranging from environmental and safety matters to bribery, fraud and money laundering. Tom provides proactive advice regarding crisis management, internal and external investigations, corporate co-operation, interviews under caution, prosecutions and associated proceedings. Tom writes extensively about corporate crime and investigations.

Anoushka Warlow is a partner specialising in acting for individuals in relation to all aspects of financial crime, principally cases involving complex allegations of fraud, bribery and corruption pursued by the SFO and other domestic and international agencies. Anoushka’s expertise includes acting in foreign and cross-border investigations, and advising on the impact on individuals of deferred prosecution agreements and corporate resolutions.

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