Fraud costs this country billions of pounds each year. While tackling it has often been low on the political agenda, recent times have seen a great deal of media interest in it. Hardly a week seems to go by without a high profile arrest of another former top executive.
Yet, surprisingly, there is no actual criminal offence of fraud in this country. Rather, prosecutors must rely upon a wide range of offences, none of which truly encapsulate the concept of fraud as it is commonly understood. Against this background, the Law Commission report 276 entitled Fraud, the principal recommendation of which is the creation of a single fraud offence, has received a lot more media attention than law reform proposals often get.
