In April 2023, the government announced the ‘failure to prevent fraud’ offence, which will make it easier to hold large organisations criminally liable for fraud committed by their employees, or by agents ‘for the organisation’s benefit, whether under UK law or targeting UK victims from overseas.

Compliance and internal audit teams will be familiar with the concept of failure to prevent from the UK Bribery Act. They will know what it means in practice for keeping compliance programmes fit-for-purpose, and being able to defend their policies in front of regulators and courts.