Aziz Rahman wrote about the significance of the Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO’s) latest co-operation guidance for corporates.

In the piece, published by FT Adviser, Aziz explains that the guidance comes as measures in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 are gradually coming into effect; including the new failure to prevent fraud offence, the expansion of corporate criminal liability and wider SFO intelligence gathering powers.

Aziz highlights and assess the guidance’s statement that if a corporate self-reports suspected wrongdoing and co-operates fully with an investigation, it can expect to receive an invitation to negotiate a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) rather than face prosecution.

Aziz warns that the SFO “still holds all the cards’’ - in such circumstances, there is still a prosecution risk for a corporate. They also emphasise that a corporate could still be invited to negotiate a DPA even if it has not self-reported, provided it has offered “exemplary co-operation”.

And he spells out the “real tension between perceived premature self-reporting and properly carrying out an internal fact-finding investigation’’.