The Criminal Finances Bill is scheduled to enter into law during the summer of 2017. It contains a number of provisions centred on the UK's financial sector and is part of a major initiative that seeks to ensure that benefit is not derived from criminal proceeds.
The incoming legislation includes:
- the creation of new offences and the provision to investigating authorities of additional powers to require explanations as to a person’s source of wealth
- criminalisation provisions that introduce two corporate crimes of failure to prevent facilitation of tax evasion
- a wide definition of an ‘associated person’, as well as employees, this will include agents or even sub-contractors
- the introduction of novel and wider criminal asset identification and seizure powers
One of the most important considerations being that failure to prevent means that for the first time in tax enforcement organisations can be prosecuted if an offence occurs and they are subsequently found to have failed to have ‘reasonable’ measures in place that could have prevented facilitation.
