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Small business will be excluded from fraud law.

 

Min­is­ters are plan­ning to exclude small busi­nesses from anti-fraud legis­la­tion by nar­row­ing the scope of a crim­inal offence tar­get­ing com­pan­ies that fail to pre­vent eco­nomic crimes. MPs and anti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign­ers had hoped the gov­ern­ment would seek to amend the eco­nomic crime and cor­por­ate trans­par­ency bill to ensure the new offence covered all com­pan­ies. The plans to limit the scope of the amend­ments will also dis­ap­point those who had hoped the legis­la­tion would remove key hurdles to the pro­sec­u­tion of white-col­lar crime. A new «fail­ure to pre­vent» offence for fraud would bring it in line with exist­ing sim­ilar cor­por­ate offences for bribery and tax eva­sion.

At present, pro­sec­utors need only prove that organ­isa­tions lacked «reas­on­able» or «adequate» con­trols to pur­sue the offence in bribery and tax eva­sion cases. «It would be much more sens­ible for the gov­ern­ment to provide strong guid­ance for SMEs on what these pro­ced­ures should be than exempt­ing them from the legis­la­tion,» she said. The Home Office declined to com­ment on the spe­cif­ics of the bill but said it was com­mit­ted to intro­du­cing a fail­ure to pre­vent amend­ment to strengthen the UK’s already «robust» eco­nomic crime legis­la­tion.

www.sba.tax

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Comments

  1. Jake14 March 2023 at 09:54

    The government is probably trying to take pressure off of small businesses. It's not the best way to go about it. Most small businesses will do the right thing but those that didn't want to abide by the laws will now be even more emboldened to do the wrong things.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Audrey14 March 2023 at 11:01

      A bad decision all around. Those that are correct should be encouraged and those that don't should suffer some sort of penalty.

      Delete
  2. Perry14 March 2023 at 12:41

    I don't think the economic crime legislation is robust at the moment. There's still a lot that is wrong with it. The legislation should have removed those hurdles to the prosecution of white-collar crime. This should have been the main objective.

    ReplyDelete

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