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Article

31 Aug 2017

Author:
Neil Hodge, on International Bar Association blog

UK: New law presumes business guilty of tax evasion unless it shows preventive measures were in place

"UK crackdown on global financial crime puts onus on companies", 21 Aug 2017

The law…introduces two new corporate offences: one for failure to prevent facilitation of UK tax evasion, and the other for failure to prevent facilitation of foreign tax evasion, providing the underlying evasion is an offence in both the UK and the foreign country concerned…

Until now, it has been difficult to prosecute organisations that knowingly turn a blind eye to, or facilitate tax evasion, unless it can be proved that senior management was involved. These new offences circumvent this requirement by making businesses guilty of an offence where a person acting for them is involved…

‘An organisation is, in effect, presumed guilty, unless it can show that it had in place prevention procedures “reasonable in all the circumstances” to prevent the facilitation from occurring,’ says Raj Chada, a criminal defence partner at London law firm Hodge Jones Allen…