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Legal Focus
OCTOBER 2013
Fraud and Bribery Act Defence
The SFO has recently brought its first charges against individuals accused of violating the Bribery Act, charging a former Chief Commercial Officer, Chief Executive Officer and Financial Controller and an Independent Financial Adviser in connection with a £23 million fraud and “offences of making and accepting a financial advantage”. To find out more, Lawyer Monthly speaks to Tom Epps, Mark Beardsworth and Charles Froud from Brown Rudnick. Please introduce yourself and your firm?
Brown Rudnick is an international law firm with offices in key financial centres in the US and Europe. We are a full service law firm providing advice across a broad range of contentious and non-contentious practice areas. Brown Rudnick's White Collar Group represents individuals and companies subject to criminal investigation and regulatory scrutiny involving allegations of white collar and corporate crime.
What are the main types of bribery cases you are involved in?
We are instructed in relation to the full range of domestic and international bribery-related issues. The London White Collar Group acts for individuals who are subject to investigation by the police and the Serious Fraud Office ('SFO') under the Bribery Act 2010 and the pre-existing corruption legislation1
. We also conduct internal
investigations for companies which have identified potential bribery and we advise senior management in relation to the merits of self- reporting in the UK. In addition, we routinely review, develop and implement corporate compliance programs in order to ensure that they satisfy the requirements of the FCPA and the Bribery Act 2010.
How effective do you think the UK Bribery act has been?
In order to measure how effective the Bribery Act has been, it is worth spending a moment considering what its objectives were. Broadly speaking, it was intended that the Act would improve the UK's track record in countering global bribery in three main areas. Firstly, it would remedy deficiencies in UK anti-corruption laws, secondly, it would encourage corporate anti-bribery compliance and, thirdly, higher levels of enforcement action would follow.
With regard to the first objective, the Act was implemented in order to remedy legislative deficiencies identified by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ('OECD') and to replace the pre-existing patchwork of common law and statutes with simple and broad offences in codified form. In large part, the Act has been successful and, as a piece of legislation, it provides an effective platform for countering bribery in and deriving from the UK.
With regard to the second objective, from the outset there has been an enormous amount of anxiety in relation to certain aspects of the Act, in particular, the offence for commercial
1The Public Bodies Corrupt Practices Act 1889, the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906, the Prevention of Corruption Act 1916 and
the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. 2
Section 7, Bribery Act 2010
3 http://www.lawyer-monthly.com/news/Survey-reveals-widespread-failure-of-international-companies-to-keep-pace-with- anticorruption-legislation-and-manage-the-complexity-of-investigations