Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

UK corporate failure to prevent offences—bribery, tax evasion facilitation and fraud: comparative table of scope, associated persons, jurisdiction, statutory defences, enforcement, prosecution and penalties

Published by a LexisNexis Corporate Crime expert

Practice notes

Corporate ‘failure to prevent’ offences

Corporate ‘failure to prevent’ offences have proved an effective way of prompting organisations to establish and uphold internal systems and procedures aimed at stopping particular financial offences. Since the arrival in 2011 of the failure to prevent bribery offence under section 7 of the Bribery Act 2010 (BA 2010), two corporate criminal offences of failing to prevent the facilitation of UK and foreign tax evasion under sections 45 and 46 of the Criminal Finances Act 2017 (CFA 2017) were introduced in 2017, and the failure to prevent fraud offence under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA 2023) commenced on 1 September 2025. The growth in both scope and number of these failure to prevent offences reflects the acknowledged aim of successive governments to widen corporate criminal liability to encompass a broader range of economic crime from which a corporate body might benefit. For information on reform of corporate criminal liability, see Practice Note: Corporate criminal liability reform—tracker. For details on the BA 2010, s 7 failure to prevent bribery offence, see Practice Note: Failure to prevent bribery—the offence. For information on the...

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Web page updated on 22/05/2026

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