Catherine West – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Catherine West on 2016-05-25.

To ask the Attorney General, what steps the Serious Fraud Office is taking to address fraud by employees in large companies.

Robert Buckland

The role of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is to investigate and prosecute serious or complex frauds.

The SFO is committed to investigating and, where appropriate, prosecuting such serious frauds, as seen in the conviction of Tom Hayes for offences related to manipulating LIBOR.

The Government is consulting and will introduce a new criminal offence to apply to corporations who failed to prevent their agents from criminal facilitating tax evasion.

The Government will also consult on extending the criminal offence of “failure to prevent” from bribery to other economic crimes such as fraud and money laundering so that firms are properly held to account for criminal activity that takes place within them.