The G20 has endorsed a set of High Level Principles on the Liability of Legal Persons for Corruption and committed to ensuring that companies benefitting from corruption can be held liable.

In the flurry of activity following the announcement of the 2017 general election, several bills were rushed through before the end of the parliamentary session. One of these was the Criminal Finances Bill, which meant that debates on its contents had to be curtailed.

Following news last week that it has delayed the clean-up of oil spills in the Niger Delta, multinational giant Shell is now embroiled in what campaigners are calling one of the biggest corruption scandals in the history of the oil sector.

Corporate criminal liability reform and a proposed new offence of ‘failure to prevent economic crime’ were debated in the House of Lords yesterday (3 April), during the Criminal Finances Bill second Committee day.  You can read the Hansard here.

It’s day two of Committee Stage in the House of Lords. This involves detailed line by line examination of the separate parts of the bill.

As a reminder, the bill will create a new corporate offence of ‘failure to prevent tax evasion’, extending the ‘failure to prevent’ model in the UK Bribery Act 2010 to corporate tax evasion, although there is some question over what, if any, differences there are between ‘adequate procedures’ as specified by the Bribery Act and ‘reasonable procedures’ as specified in the new failure to prevent facilitation of tax evasion offence.

Supermarket chain Tesco escapes prosecution and pays a £129m fine and £85m in compensation to shareholders over 2014’s accounting scandal.

Last week (8 March) cross-party Peers debated much needed legal reform to tackle widespread corruption and human rights abuses committed by multi-national corporations.

Later this week the House of Lords will debate the Criminal Finances Bill.

This is a government bill to amend the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

The bill will create a new corporate offence of ‘failure to prevent tax evasion’, meaning companies could be prosecuted for not having procedures in place to stop tax dodging.

CORE and our partner organisations are calling for the law to be changed so that companies and banks can be held to account for fraud and money laundering.

An important bill aimed at tackling the big issue of corruption is currently making its way through Parliament. It is called the Criminal Finances Bill.

Money laundering, recovering the proceeds of crime, tax evasion and terrorist funding are among the key targets for Home Secretary Amber Rudd. In her 10 November speech to the Financial[…]