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.
