Publication
Ireland
On 31 October 2023, the Screening of Third Country Transactions Act 2023 (the “Act”), which establishes a new foreign direct investment ("FDI") screening regime in Ireland, was enacted.
United Kingdom | Publication | October 2024
The new UK failure to prevent fraud offence is a game-changing offence. It makes it much easier to prosecute UK and non-UK companies for fraud, and will have a similar impact to the UK Bribery Act (which has resulted in multiple large deferred prosecution agreements under the ”failure to prevent bribery” offence). The UK government has said that it expects the “offence will encourage more companies to implement or improve prevention procedures, driving a major shift in corporate culture to help reduce fraud”.
In short, the new offence will make companies liable for fraud committed for their benefit (or the benefit of their clients) by employees, subsidiaries and third party service providers. The only defence for the company will be to have had in place reasonable procedures to prevent fraud.
We are receiving queries from clients about when the UK government’s “reasonable procedures” guidance is due to be published, when the offence will come into force and what they should be doing now to prepare.
In summary:
We have published a series of articles summarising the offence, how to approach risk assessments, putting in place policies and procedures, and considerations in relation to tone from the top and training. We will be updating these when the final guidance is published.
Many organisations have already started their preparation for the new offence, recognising that the reasonable procedures guidance will be high level, and that the procedures need to be tailored to the risks faced by each organisation.
We have summarised below some key considerations based on our experience of advising clients.
Let us know if you would like help with understanding the new offence, how it might apply to your organisation or how to approach risk assessments, programme enhancement and training.
Publication
On 31 October 2023, the Screening of Third Country Transactions Act 2023 (the “Act”), which establishes a new foreign direct investment ("FDI") screening regime in Ireland, was enacted.
Publication
In recent years, rapid developments in AI systems and technologies have transformed AI from a futuristic concept into an integral part of business strategy.
Publication
The European Commission (EC) is contemplating a revision of the procedural framework for antitrust investigations that is laid down in Regulation 1/2003 and Regulation 773/2004 (together, the “Regulations”).
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