CPS and SFO update guidance on corporate prosecutions
Charities could face prosecution under new offences for failure to prevent fraud and for fraud committed by senior managers.
The Crown Prosecution Service and Serious Fraud Office have released joint updated guidance setting out their common approach to corporate prosecutions.
The guidance updates relate to fraud offences introduced by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, in particular the failure to prevent fraud offence and the senior manager offence, both of which are relevant to charities.
For a summary of these offences and what charities need to do, see our previous articles:
- New fraud offences - what charities need to do now
- New corporate offence of failure to prevent fraud - how should charities prepare
Commenting on the new offences and the guidance updates, the Chief Crown Prosecutor leading on economic crime for the CPS said:
"The new ‘failure to prevent fraud’ offence and developments in the identification doctrine represent a major step forward in tackling corporate crime.
“Together, they remove barriers that have made it harder to hold companies to account, and our updated guidance equips prosecutors to make full use of these changes.[…]"
“Large companies, charities and other organisations need to act now to make sure they have proper fraud prevention systems in place.”
The director of the Serious Fraud Office added:
“Now is the time to take action. Corporations must get their house in order or be ready to face investigation.”
We are working with charities to implement reasonable fraud prevention measures and to reduce their fraud risk.
For more information, please contact Gabriel Cohen in our Charity Law and Governance team.