On 12 May 2016, the UK Ministry of Justice ("MoJ") announced that it would be considering whether to extend the scope of the UK Bribery Act's section 7 offence of a corporate failing to prevent bribery to other economic crimes such as fraud and money laundering.
Justice Minister Dominic Raab MP said: "The government is finding new ways to tackle economic crime and we are taking a rigorous and robust approach to corporations that fail to prevent bribery or allow the tax evasion on their behalf." Mr. Raab added that the UK government wanted to "carefully consider whether the evidence justifies any further extension of this model to other areas of economic crime, so that large corporations are properly held to account." David Green CB QC, Director of the Serious Fraud Office ("SFO"), welcomed the announcement, saying that section 7 should be extended to include a corporate offence of a company "failing to prevent acts of economic or financial crime by persons associated with it" and that this was "the way to get after errant corporations effectively."
The MoJ's consultation, which will be published this summer, will "explore whether the existing 'failure to prevent' model should be extended to complement existing legal and regulatory frameworks" and follows on the heels of Sweett Group PLC's conviction for failing to prevent an associated person bribing another – the SFO's first successful prosecution and conviction of a corporate for a section 7 offence.
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