January 6 2016
Prosecutors should have US-style powers to punish big business and root out financial crime in the City, the head of the Serious Fraud Office said today.
David Green said legal reforms inspired by the American system of “vicarious liability” would make it easier to hold banks and other large corporations criminally responsible for wrongdoing carried out by their staff.
Over there, if someone is acting criminally in the course of their employment and part of their motive is to benefit the company then anything they do makes the company liable. That’s very easy.
“Here, we have the ‘controlling mind’ test where if you want to convict a company you have to prove that the ‘controlling mind’ — usually the board of directors — was complicit in the criminality.
That is difficult because inevitably the email trail tends to dry up at middle management and evidentially it is hard to prove.
That’s why I suggest ways that it could be changed. It’s a matter of public confidence.” Mr Green, director of the SFO since 2012, said another option would be to amend the Bribery Act to create a new offence of failing to prevent crime.