Remember the Criminal Finances Act 2017? HMRC does.

The Corporate Criminal Offences (CCO) for the failure to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion were introduced by Part 3 of the Criminal Finances Act 2017, (not so) hot off the heels of the Bribery Act 2010’s “failure to prevent bribery” offence. The big question has been how long firms would be given to develop and embed their “reasonable prevention procedures”, the sole defence to the strict liability offences. Looks like we’re certainly there, as HMRC continues to be actively enforcing these offences and open new CCO investigations, despite the impact of COVID-19.

Following a freedom of information request, HMRC has disclosed the latest figures for CCO investigations. As at 26 May 2021:

• HMRC had 14 live CCO investigations under way, although no charging decisions had yet been made in any of them (up from 9 live investigations as of February 2020)
• 14 live opportunities were currently under review
• 40 further opportunities had been reviewed and rejected.

These investigations and opportunities span 10 different business sectors, including financial services, oils, construction, labour provision and software development, and sit across all HMRC customer groups, including some of the UK's largest organisations.

Might be a good time for firms to take stock given the potential unlimited fines for organisations found guilty of the offences.

Read more about the CCO offences here. HMRC's guidance can be found here.