SFO enters into third and largest Deferred Prosecution Agreement

On 17 January 2017, Sir Brian Leveson QC approved the UK's third Deferred Prosecution Agreement ("DPA"), resulting in orders for disgorgement, penalties and costs exceeding £500 million. This is the largest DPA since their introduction in the UK in 2014. Herbert Smith Freehills' London Corporate Crime and Investigations team negotiated the first DPA with the Serious Fraud Office ("SFO"), which was concluded in November 2015.

This latest agreement confirms their status as an important tool for the SFO in tackling financial crime, at a time when the government is consulting on measures to increase the scope for companies to incur criminal liability (see our e-bulletins on Failure to Prevent Economic Crime and Failure to Prevent Facilitation of Tax Evasion).

In this briefing, we provide an overview of the Rolls-Royce DPA, and discuss some of the emerging themes from the growing body of DPA case-law indicating the importance of what the Judge described as Rolls-Royce's "extraordinary co-operation".

Our full briefing is available here