Last month, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, together with the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), issued joint guidance on their approach to the ‘ownership and control test’, which determines the scope of UK asset freeze sanctions. Guidance alone is, however, unlikely to address the problems caused by the UK’s ownership and control […]
Have you ever clicked on a link in an email that appeared genuine only to find out you had just failed a phishing attempt test set out by your IT department? These tests may look like they are meant to embarrass the unwary, but they are really a crucial element of a wider cyber protection […]
Anna Bradshaw and Alistair Jones publish in-depth analysis of the current state of play of the UK’s ownership and control test in leading industry publication WorldECR, the Journal of Export Controls and Sanctions (see issue #125). They assess the combined impact of the Court of Appeal’s comments in Mints on 6 October, the High Court’s […]
Several spectacular recent debacles have left the crypto world reeling, including the collapse of the FTX exchange over a year ago or the current unfolding of Binance, not to mention the legal actions against the founder of the first and the co-founder of the second. In this article for The Times, Keith Oliver and Amalia […]
Late 2023 brought a welcome development in the fight against fraud, as the UK government concluded the Online Fraud Charter with various industry representatives. The Charter represents a practical step by which online giants can move towards countering the extremely high proportion of online fraud. To take on the current fraud epidemic, however, it will […]
In August 2023, then Home Secretary Suella Braverman wrote to all senior policing officials in England and Wales, commending them for their “agreement to a national commitment to follow all reasonable lines of enquiry [sic] for all crime types”. The letter, covering a wide range of topics, was clearly focussed on trying to encourage the […]
Many of the underlying principles of English law developed from simple cases of relatively low monetary value, perhaps most famously in the foundational negligence case of Donoghue v Stevenson. The recent decision in AXA Insurance v Kryeziu [2023] EWHC 3233 (KB), a low-value insurance dispute, is a useful reminder that no matter the garden variety […]
Having spent years looking with envy at the US, where ‘plea deals’ are commonly used, UK enforcement agencies finally got a similar weapon in their armoury in 2014, with the introduction of deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs). However, since the first one was approved in late 2015, only 13 DPAs have been concluded. The Law Society […]
In this article for LexisNexis Corporate Crime expert, Diana Czugler and Joseph Duggin discuss key economic crime developments in 2023 and what to keep an eye on this year. One key development is the new failure to prevent fraud offence and expansion of corporate criminal liability for economic crimes and the impact this might have […]
Under upcoming plans from the Prudential Regulation Authority, banks in the UK that self-report wrongdoing early could benefit from an “enhancement settlement discount”. The plans are to be fleshed out by the spring but, under the scheme, fines could be reduced by up to half. James Tyler was quoted in an article by Banking Risk […]
