BCL's Shaul Brazil and Jonathan Flynn's article, "Why is it so hard to prosecute companies in the UK?" has been published by Fraud Intelligence.
Here's a quote from the article*:
"In March 2019, Corruption Watch published a report highlighting the disparity between corporate prosecutions in the UK and the US for certain financial crimes that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis. The report concluded that, over the past ten years, the UK has failed to bring a single successful corporate prosecution for this type of conduct, and has imposed just under £2.5 billion in non-criminal fines. During the same period, the US has brought close to 20 successful corporate prosecutions against New York and London banks, and has imposed more than £25 billion in both criminal and non-criminal fines.
The existence of this UK and US 'corporate crime gap' (as the report describes it) begs an obvious question: why is it so hard to prosecute companies in the UK? The answer is that the law in the UK for establishing corporate criminal liability is not fit for purpose."
* This article was originally published by Fraud Intelligence on July 11th 2019. You can read the full version here.
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