On 6 November 2024, the UK government published its long-awaited Guidance for the new offence of failure to prevent fraud (FTP Fraud Offence), which will come into force on 1 September 2025. The FTP Fraud Offence was introduced via the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA) and represents the latest tool in UK law-enforcement armoury as part of the government’s continuing efforts to improve fraud prevention procedures and establish an anti-fraud culture within UK business activities. The UK’s Serious Fraud Office has stated that it is “looking forward to using it to penalise large organisations who should be doing better.”
The FTP Fraud Offence is expected to mirror the significant overhaul in corporate compliance that the UK Bribery Act 2010 introduced, and qualifying “large” organisations that do not already have reasonable anti-fraud procedures in place have 10 months in which to implement them. The Guidance, while not binding, provides some non-exhaustive detail about the procedures that large organisations can consider to help mitigate associated persons from committing fraudulent offences.