The NCA has been granted freezing orders on eight bank accounts containing a total of more than £100 million, which is suspected to have derived from BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION IN AN OVERSEAS NATION. The Account Freezing Orders (AFOs) were obtained at Westminster Magistrates Court on 12 August, and represent the largest amount of money frozen using […]

HMRC has confirmed that it has opened its first investigations into the corporate criminal offence of failure to prevent the facilitation of UK tax evasion, using new powers to tackle corporate fraud contained in the Criminal Finances Act, introduced in the wake of the Panama Papers leaks ‘These investigations have been commenced since November 2018 […]

The new strict liability corporate offences brought into force by the Criminal Finances Act 2017 make businesses criminally liable if their “associated persons” facilitate tax evasion by a taxpayer either in the UK or overseas. The offences, modelled on the corporate “failure to prevent bribery” offence in the Bribery Act 2010, are equally wide-ranging and […]

Two new corporate criminal offences come into force on 30 September 2017. The new offences can make a company criminally liable if it fails to prevent the facilitation of UK or non-UK tax evasion by an employee, agent or anyone else acting for or on behalf of the company. The offences can catch both UK […]

INTRODUCTION In April 2016, the Government published an action plan (‘Plan’) to counter the money laundering and terrorist financing risks faced by the UK, as identified in the national risk assessment published in October 2015. The Plan focused on the following priorities: A more robust law enforcement response to the risks, including building new capabilities […]

The Criminal Finances Act 2017 represents a further significant development in the approach to the investigation and prosecution of financial crime in the UK.1  Introduction In one of its final acts, before it dissolved ahead of the upcoming general election, the UK Parliament passed the Criminal Finances Act 2017 (the “Act”), which received Royal Assent […]

At the end of April, the Criminal Finances Act 2017 was passed, bringing to life a new raft of measures aimed at increasing state powers to tackle financial crime. The rules are set to come into force in September 2017 and include new powers to obtain information, share knowledge and recover criminal property. However, of […]