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:
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: