The fight against corporate fraud and the significance of the new ‘failure to prevent fraud’ offence for large organisations

Johnson, Diana

Abstract

This paper will examine the recent laws introduced to tackle the issue of corporate fraud following the UK’s counter-fraud strategy and Economic Crime Plan. Corporate crime is a significant challenge for society, it causes harm to citizens, national economies and is challenging to enforce due to the shortcomings of the identification doctrine. Recent instances of wide-reaching harm resulting from corporate economic crime include that associated with the global financial crisis, market manipulation and large scale corporate fraud. Academics, regulators and commentators all agree that corporate crime must be tackled for the benefit of society at large, but that there is room for improvement in the corporate criminal liability laws. The problems experienced by prosecutors in the attribution of corporate criminal liability to larger companies with complex management structures due to the identification doctrine are outlined, with a detailed analysis of the ‘failure to prevent’ corporate criminal liability offences, introduced to circumvent the problems associated with the identification doctrine. The new failure to prevent fraud offence, which will come into force in September 2025, together with changes to the identification doctrine for economic crimes made in the Economic Crime (Corporate Transparency) Act 2023, are analysed and evaluated. The paper concludes with an assessment of the current state of corporate criminal liability in England and Wales.

• Presentation Conference Type: Presentation / Talk
• Conference Name: 2025 Counter Fraud, Cybercrime and Forensic Accounting Conference
• Start Date: Jun 18, 2025
• Deposit Date: Jul 2, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 3, 2025
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/14666474