What Labour Means For UK White Collar Crime Enforcement

What Labour Means For UK White Collar Crime Enforcement

August 5, 2024, Law360

Ian Redfearn’s commentary was included in a Law360 article focusing on the key financial crime policies the new Labour government is likely to pursue, one of which is introducing an “expanded fraud strategy” as part of plans to reform the criminal justice system’s approach to financial crime. The party has historically supported tougher measures against corporations and proposed reviewing the funding of the Security Fraud Office.

Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry called in 2022 for a crackdown on corporate bad behavior by emboldening the SFO through legal reforms and overhauling the agency's funding model. She floated proposing to examine whether it should keep a portion of the revenues generated from financial settlements such as deferred prosecution agreements.

Ian noted that "if the Labour Party were to take an approach that would allow the SFO to retain a greater proportion of the revenue it generates through enforcement, we could expect an impact on its capabilities to progress existing cases and new investigations.”

Further, Ian commented on the 2023 the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, which introduced a new corporate failure to prevent fraud offense while also overhauling the legal standard for corporate liability, known as the identification doctrine.

Even though this legislation passed in late 2023, the new Labour government can still make its mark, with Ian stating that the new government could draft the guidelines in the image of the Bribery Act 2010, which stipulates companies must have "adequate procedures" in place.

But, with the anti-bribery law aging, Labour might also take it as an opportunity to strike its own course and "refresh those principles," Ian added.