(LD):...The UK introduced a failure-to-prevent offence
for bribery in Section 7 of the Bribery Act. The effect of that
was reinforced by the introduction of deferred prosecution
agreements in 2014. It is useful to consider the effect of the
“before and after” of those provisions by looking at BAE, which
represents the situation before, and Rolls-Royce, which represents the situation
after. Before Section 7 of the Bribery Act, we had the
longest-running bribery investigation ever: BAE settled with the
SFO. I quote from the blog of David Corker, another lawyer
specialising in financial crime litigation, who said that,
“BAE’s obduracy resulted in a humiliating settlement for the SFO
and a profound defeat for the interests of justice … BAE was able
to dictate the terms of the SFO’s surrender: a plea of guilt to
an obscure books and records offence buried away in the Companies
Act, the payment of a trifling gratuity to faraway governments at
BAE’s discretion”—
that is, BAE chose whether to pay it or not—
“and an everlasting immunity for all its employees who had
conducted and overseen the bribery”.
No wonder it was called “humiliating”.
In the “after” scenario in 2017, after Section 7, Rolls-Royce admitted its systemic
corruption, paid a fine of £500 million and, instead of seeking
immunity for its employees, committed itself to helping the SFO.
The need for, and effect of, such a corporate criminal offence
are therefore clear. Without such an offence, it will continue to
be extremely difficult to prosecute large companies for money
laundering offences and the UK will continue to outsource its
justice to the United States. Again, I pray in aid the EU
situation—but it is unlikely to impress in Brussels, which is
progressively turning the handle on these issues and is well able
to have them in a list of regulatory requirements that need to be
in place to gain any equivalence, or any deal, on financial
services...
To read the whole debate, CLICK
HERE
