Deferred Prosecution Agreements

On 18 August 2025, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) published their Joint SFO-CPS Corporate Prosecution Guidance, intended for prosecutors who will make decisions about whether or not to prosecute a corporation.

The government has published official guidance on reasonable fraud prevention procedures, setting the deadline of 1 September 2025 for large organisations to make sure they are compliant

Many of the SFO’s most notable recent investigations have begun with dawn raids, so-called because they normally occur very early in the morning. These raids can be a disorientating and uncomfortable experience in themselves, but as we explain further below, unfortunately they normally signal the beginning of a major SFO investigation. The period between arrest and charge – which can be lengthy in complex white-collar crime investigations – is absolutely critical. So, what should you and your legal team be doing in this period?

The passage of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA) on 26 October 2023 represents one of the most important developments in the criminal law for UK corporates, their senior management, and their advisers, since the Bribery Act was introduced.

The proliferation of fraud in the UK over the past decade has been widely publicised and discussed. We have already written regularly on the topic, including in March, when we explored the link between economic decline and increasing fraud offences; and in May 2023 when we discussed new statistics revealing the everyday reality for businesses operating in the “fraud capital of the world”.

The government has announced the establishment of an Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offences (the Review), to be chaired by barrister Jonathan Fisher KC. This is another step towards fulfilling the plans set out earlier in 2023, when the Fraud Strategy was published.

Since our last update on the progress of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, Parliament has taken its summer break, and the British weather has been through all its seasons and back again.

But are we any closer to getting new corporate criminal offences on the statute books? The unavoidably non-committal answer is ‘yes and no’.  In this article we chart the progress of the potential new failure to prevent fraud offence, but also the late introduction of amendments to extend the persons who can be the “directing mind and will” of a corporate body in order to establish corporate criminal liability.

For more than a decade, lawyers, academics and business representatives have been discussing the need for a new approach to corporate criminal liability for economic crime. With significant expansion of the tried and tested failure to prevent (FTP) structure now imminent, and further debate on the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill scheduled for late March, there are questions still to be answered.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced a significant expansion of its project to examine misleading green claims. The regulator will be investigating a range of everyday essential items, including food and drink, cleaning products, toiletries, and personal care items, and will be considering whether companies are complying with UK consumer protection law in the environmental claims they are make about those products.

A comment made by Minister of State for Security Thomas Tugendhat during a debate on the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (the Bill) on 25th January has sparked a flurry of media reports and speculation. Tugendhat was confirming that the government supported the inclusion of new corporate criminal offences, based on the failure to prevent (FTP) model, in the Bill.

It is estimated that 30% of the world’s production of cotton originates in China. Of that cotton 85% originates in Xinjiang, which is the centre of the Uyghur atrocities. Recently before the High Court, the World Uyghur Congress (“the WUC”) argued that UK authorities were under a duty to block and/or launch money laundering investigations into the many imports of Xinjiang cotton brought into the UK - many by household names in the clothing industry – because of the high likelihood of prison and forced labour forming the start of the supply chain

The latest Annual Report of the NCA’s UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU), published this week, makes interesting reading. The UKFIU is responsible for receiving, analysing and disseminating intelligence submitted through the Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) regime and its role is to alert law enforcement agencies, both at home and abroad, to potential instances of money laundering and terrorist financing.

In late October the FCA launched a consultation on CP22/20 a range of new rules that will enhance its regulatory toolkit for dealing with ESG issues.

The Competition and Markets Authority (the CMA) has been threatening to investigate companies making misleading environmental claims since it announced the launch of the Green Claims Code in September 2021. On 29 July 2022, having given companies a period of time to get their representations in order, it announced that it had launched investigations into the eco-friendly and sustainability claims made by ASOS, Boohoo and George at Asda about their fashion products, including clothing, footwear, and accessories. These are the first greenwashing investigations to be announced under the Green Claims Code although the fashion industry is a sector the CMA had specifically targeted as a priority area for greenwashing.

On 10th June, the Law Commission launched its “Options Paper” which presents a number of ways in which the law of corporate criminal liability could be reformed. The detailed paper, accompanied by a 14 page summary document, sets out potential options for reform in this area and rules out other possibilities as not viable.

The spectre of a failure to prevent economic crime offence for corporates once again received attention during a debate in parliament on 13 January 2021 as part of the consideration of the Financial Services Bill.

The SFO’s entered into its ninth deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) earlier today, this time reaching a resolution of bribery allegations with a company called Airline Services Limited. With other corporate cases still on its books, we can expect to see more DPAs as these cases work through the system. So, what does that mean for companies which might be caught up in an investigation?

In a press release dated 22 October 2020, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) announced that it had reached an agreement in principle regarding a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) with Airline Services Ltd (ASL). This agreement is subject to approval from the Court, which will be sought from Mrs Justice May at a public hearing at Southwark Crown Court, sitting at the Royal Courts of Justice, on 30 October 2020. Subject to the approval, the SFO have stated that the DPA will conclude its investigation into ASL and its conduct.

The Government announced its intention to introduce an Economic Crime Levy in the Budget 2020. This is designed to fund government action to tackle money laundering and help deliver the reforms committed to in the Economic Crime plan 2019-2020. It has since followed up on this - on 21 July - with the launch of a consultation as to how such a levy would operate.

In September 2019, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) published its list of businesses that have not complied with the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 (MLR 2017) for the tax year 2019 to 2020. Within this, it revealed that it has fined Touma Foreign Exchange Ltd £7.8 million for a wide range of serious failures under the Money Laundering Regulations.