Expert Bribery and Corruption Solicitors
Allegations of bribery and corruption are among the most serious financial criminal threats any company or individual can face. Bribery and corruption investigations can be severely disruptive: long running, time consuming and resource intensive. The penalties for anyone found culpable are severe.
Allegations are also often highly complex. They may involve domestic and overseas conduct; the participation of third parties; counter-parties with connections to foreign states or state-owned bodies; parallel internal and external law enforcement investigations; and engagement by law enforcement agencies in more than one country.
Hickman & Rose specialise in representing corporates and senior executives caught up in these sorts of complex matters and have been involved in most of the SFO’s major bribery and corruption investigations of the past decade..
Our expert bribery and corruption lawyers have a strong track record of success in bribery and corruption matters and understand the practical and reputational difficulties that dealing with these claims can pose. Our lawyers take a highly strategic approach from the outset.
While the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the UK’s regional police forces are able to investigate allegations, the primary investigatory agency for bribery and corruption matters is the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
SFO investigations tend to rely heavily on data such as emails, other digital communications, and financial information. As a result, the agency’s investigations can take a long time: often many years.
The multi-jurisdictional nature of many bribery and corruption matters has led the SFO to develop close working relationships with its counterparts in other jurisdictions, such as the US Department of Justice (DoJ) Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US.
The SFO has wide ranging powers of investigation and is able, under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1987, to both compel the production of material and to require anyone in the UK to attend an interview and to answer questions. There are very few exceptions to this requirement.
While compelled answers cannot usually be used against an individual in a subsequent criminal prosecution, in some recent cases the SFO has treated as suspects individuals who were first interviewed under this compulsory power.
Introduced into law in July 2011, the Bribery Act 2010 significantly widened the scope and definition of bribery and corruption by bringing a broad range of behaviours within the ambit of potential criminal offending.
One of the Act’s most significant measures – and the characteristic which distinguishes bribery from most other forms of financial crime – was the introduction of corporate liability for companies which fail to prevent bribery.
Section 7 of the Act effectively mandates all ‘relevant commercial organisations’ to have adequate anti-bribery and corruption procedures in place. If an individual associated with the company is found to have committed bribery, the company itself will be guilty of the separate offence of ‘failing to prevent’ bribery unless it can demonstrate it had such procedures in place.
Any corporate found to have failed to prevent bribery in this way can be an unlimited fine. The penalty for a convicted individual under the Act is a fine and/or imprisonment of up to ten years.
The legal landscape for bribery and corruption changed again in 2014 with the introduction of Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs).
DPAs are agreements made between a prosecuting authority and a corporate, in which the latter admits culpability for criminal wrongdoing and in return avoids criminal prosecution. The corporate will have to agree to various conditions likely to include paying significant financial penalties and to undertake remedial measures, but is then able to draw a line under the investigation.
Companies are increasingly turning to DPAs to resolve allegations of both serious fraud and bribery and corruption. However, there is real concern is that senior executives who play no part in the DPA process are being unfairly blamed for criminal behaviour for which they were not personally responsible.
As part of a DPA the company must sign up to a narrative in which it admits criminality and blames individuals for wrongdoing. This raise the risk of conflict between the company and the blamed individual – who is likely to have had no role in agreeing the DPA deal. This conflict is further complicated if the individual is called by the company to give an account as part of an internal investigation.
The good news for such individuals is that, at the time of writing, not one individual who has been criminally prosecuted following a DPA between their erstwhile employer and the SFO has been convicted, even when they were explicitly blamed for the wrongdoing in the agreed DPA narrative.
Hickman & Rose solicitors have successfully defended individuals prosecuted in these circumstances following a DPA and has won acquittals in several high profile cases. Any individual who fears they may be blamed when their firm is being investigated for bribery and corruption is advised to obtain specialist, independent legal advice.
How our bribery and corruption solicitors can help
Hickman & Rose’s business crime team has been involved in most of the SFO’s major bribery and corruption investigations in recent years. Matters in which our lawyers have been instructed include the SFO investigations into bribery and corruption involving Petrofac, ENRC, Amec Foster Wheeler, BAT, Airbus, Chemring, EFT, Balfour Beatty, Macmillan Publishing, Rolls-Royce and Unaoil.
We have been at the forefront of defending individuals prosecuted following a DPA agreed between the SFO and the company they worked for. We acted for the former Managing Director of Tesco UK Ltd, prosecuted after the company agreed a DPA with the SFO in which he was named as a wrongdoer. The case against our client was thrown out by the trial judge who concluded there was no case to answer. Another client again acquitted when prosecuted following a DPA, was a former senior executive of Serco, wrongly blamed in the DPA narrative for an accounting fraud between the company and the SFO.
As well as acting for suspects, the team at Hickman & Rose has long experience of acting for individuals who become caught up in an investigation as witnesses or potential witnesses and those who are interviewed under the compulsory powers of the SFO.
The firm has experience of bribery and corruption investigations by other law enforcement agencies including the National Crime Agency and the police. Many of our cases involve parallel investigations and overseas law enforcement agencies. In these cases we have great experience of working alongside the best lawyers in other jurisdictions.
As well as advising founders, senior executives and other individuals, the team regularly act for companies, charities and other organisations facing allegations of bribery and corruption and have experience and expertise in conducting internal investigations on the behalf of such clients.