Over the past few years, there has been a quiet revolution in the state of corporate criminal law in the United Kingdom, as the country approaches ever closer to the American model of large settlements and huge fines. In 2011, the UK Bribery Act came into force, brushing aside a century of outdated laws with a law that many consider even stricter than the United States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In 2014, the first ever sentencing guidelines for corporate bribery were passed, with the intent and expectation that fines for corporate misbehavior would be significantly enhanced. Also in 2014, the U.K. took the large step of introducing the American practice of deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs).
These changes, significant as they were, took some time to come to fruition. In part, this was by design: The Bribery Act only applied to new crimes (post-2011), and the law setting out DPAs requires significant court approval, which takes time. But prosecutions for bribery have started appearing, fines are increasing, and now, as of July 8, 2016, the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has secured only its second-ever DPA, based partly on breaches of the Bribery Act.
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