On June 15, 2023, the UK Government announced proposals to introduce the biggest reform of corporate crime legislation in more than 50 years, with the result that, if enacted into law, companies who commit fraud, money laundering and bribery will be subject to greater scrutiny and be at greater risk of being successfully prosecuted.
The…
In our alert called “Criminal Investigations in the UK: What to Watch for the UK and the EU in 2023”, we predicted the introduction of a new “failure to prevent” offence. We predicted that such a new offence would likely have far-reaching, and potentially seismic, consequences on organizations both (i) in having to…
In this blog post, we provide an overview of the updates to the Criminal Division’s Corporate Enforcement Policy (CEP) and discuss the impact of these changes on the corporate enforcement policies for criminal violations of sanctions and export controls, criminal violations of antitrust laws, and civil violations of the False Claim Act.
On January 17…
The following article was originally published in Law360 on July 29.
To address the issues surrounding the incidental seizure of privileged communications within a broader seizure of electronic data, the U.S. Department of Justice recently created a new Special Matters Unit within
the Fraud Section.
The unit will function as a specialized team to address…
We live in a world where, almost overnight, “social distancing” entered both our lexicon and our way of life. The constraints associated with keeping a minimum distance with one another have caused, and will continue to cause, significant difficulty for restaurants, pubs, bars, gyms, sporting events, concerts and more. Another established practice, however, also must address the reckoning that it too faces: the jury trial.
While the coronavirus pandemic temporarily brought jury trials in England and Wales to a grinding halt, jury trials had for some time prior been beset with pressures and challenges as a result of austerity measures. In January 2020, a report by barristers in the west of England found that Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service had cut the number of sitting days for courts in the region by 15%. This had led to “rocketing delays”, some courts being booked up for months on end. Amanda Pinto QC, chair of the Bar Council, noted that the problems were not confined solely to the west of England; indeed, at a national level, the average time from commission of offence to resolution at Crown Court increased from 392 days in 2010 to 525 days in 2019. According to Ms. Pinto, the issue was “fast becoming a national crisis.”…
Continue Reading Trial by Jury: Inalienable Right or Anachronistic Practice?
On February 28, 2020, a jury acquitted three former Barclays executives – Roger Jenkins, Tom Kalaris and Richard Boath – of criminal fraud charges brought by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). The charges were founded on allegations that the three had conspired to make secret payments to Qatar in exchange for the state’s provision of…
On February 5, 2020, the UK Court of Appeal dismissed a challenge to the UK’s first Unexplained Wealth Order (UWO). Mrs. Zamira Hajiyeva, wife of the former chair of the International Bank of Azerbaijan who was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2016 for defrauding the bank out of £2.2 billion, launched a challenge…
