The Failure to Prevent Fraud offence was introduced in section 199 of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA). The Act provides that the Secretary of State must issue guidance about procedures before the provisions come into force. This guidance to organisations on the offence of failure to prevent fraud has now been issued (as of 6 ,November 2024). The guidance states that the offence will come into effect nine months after the publication of this guidance, to allow organisations to develop and implement their fraud prevention procedures.
A reminder of what the Failure to Prevent Fraud offence is. The legislation will apply to large organisations where an associate of the organisation commits any of the offences listed in schedule 13 of the ECCTA (for example, cheating the public revenue or false accounting) with the intention of benefitting the organisation and the organisation did not have in place reasonable fraud prevention procedures. The large organisations to which the legislation will apply align with the thresholds in the Companies Act 2006. In short, a large organisation is one satisfying two or more of the following conditions: turnover of more than £36 million; balance sheet total of more than £18 million; or more than 250 employees. Readers should be mindful that there are proposals to uplift the monetary thresholds under company law.
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