Confess corruption to avoid prosecution, SFO says

By Sara Lewis

The UK Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO) joint head of bribery and corruption Ben Morgan has advised companies to confess to the agency when they are exposed to graft – they may be able to strike a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA). Increased whistleblowing means the SFO is more likely to find out about bribery than it has in the past: “Whether to sit on a corruption issue or to come and talk to us about it has always been a question of playing the odds. And my point is those odds are changing,” Morgan told an Annual Anti Bribery & Corruption Forum staged by the Anti Money Laundering Professionals Forum, in London. Even if a company has detected bribery, ended it and fixed the problem, it should still confess as the SFO will be more lenient and ready to negotiate DPAs: “Let me make one thing very clear; if we come to you, you can assume we have one thing on our mind, and that is looking for evidence to establish whether we should prosecute,” he said, adding: “If a company comes to us and alerts us to conduct about which we otherwise didn’t know, it is hard to see how it would be in the public interest to prosecute as opposed to seek to resolve the matter through a DPA.”