UK Policing and Crime Act Receives Royal Assent

The Policing and Crime Act 2017 was enacted. The Act has wide reaching implications, including for the financial services industry.  Among other things, the Act creates new civil monetary penalties and increases the maximum term of imprisonment for breaches of financial sanctions in the UK. The new monetary penalties regime will be administered by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, which was established on March 31, 2016 and sits within HM Treasury. The OFSI may impose a monetary penalty if it is satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that a breach has been committed and the offending person knew or had reasonable cause to suspect that their actions would be in breach of the obligations under the financial sanctions legislation. The maximum term on conviction for indictment has been set at seven years, and at six months for summary conviction.

In addition, the Act amends the Serious Crime Act 2007 to include financial sanctions breaches in the list of offenses for which a Serious Crime Prevention Order may be imposed. The Act covers entities other than financial institutions supervised by the Financial Conduct Authority, which are not necessarily subject to regulatory oversight. SCPOs could bridge this supervisory gap by placing specific requirements on such unregulated entities to ensure that they comply with financial sanctions in the future.  

The Act also amends the Crime and Courts Act 2013 to include financial sanction breaches in the list of offenses for which a Deferred Prosecution Agreement may be entered into. The first DPA issued in the UK involving a financial institution was between the Serious Fraud Office and Standard Bank in December 2015 for a failure to prevent bribery in contravention of the Bribery Act 2010. 

View the Act. 

You may like to view our client note on UK DPAs, available here.