Business Crime Quarterly Spring/Summer 2018

The heat is certainly on this summer. Authorities across the globe have been busy reviewing their measures to tackle financial crime and proposing new ones. The European Commission has introduced two new initiatives. The first will beef up whistleblower protection while the other aims to facilitate cross-border investigations. Hardly blue sky thinking, but a clear signal that the EU is itself taking a lead on addressing ABC enforcement across its member states.

Other initiatives to crack down on corruption include new obligations on certain Belgian companies to ramp up their internal compliance programme, including evaluation of risk, heightened vigilance and increased reporting requirements. In Russia, ABC provisions have been enacted dealing specifically with public procurement, with tough new penalties for breach. A new supervising commission in China will investigate corruption-related offences by a broad range of public employees and entities.

Conversely, reforms to the Dodd-Frank Act have reduced the regulatory burden on small and medium sized banks in the US without significantly altering the post-crisis regulatory regime. In the UK, a review of the operation of the Bribery Act 2010 will consider specifically the impact of that statute on small and medium sized enterprises. That review coincides with the appointment of Lisa Osofsky as the new director of the SFO and follows the first UK conviction of a company for the corporate offence of failing to prevent bribery.

In this edition of Business Crime Quarterly we also report on recent notable cases in the US, France and Germany, look at new policy initiatives in the UK and outline the findings of a recent global review of fraud and corruption.

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