Recent corporate scandals have demonstrated on a grand scale the potentially disastrous consequences of fraud. Individuals, corporations, the state itself: all are possible targets of fraud, while none are immune to its effects. Small wonder, then, that around the world, courts and legislatures are uniting in a bid to stamp out fraud in all spheres of life.
In the UK, Kate Hurford at Herbert Smith reports that the Home Office is seeking comments on proposals for a radical rethink of the law on fraud. Currently, defendants in fraud cases can often get off on technicalities since the deception offences on the statute books are overly specific. The Government aims to close these loopholes by establishing a general offence of fraud which would cast the legislative net wider to encompass other kinds of deceitful conduct. The new offence would essentially cover dishonest behaviour adopted with the intent of benefiting the offender or causing loss to another party, and involving one of three different types of wrongdoing: false representation; wrongful failure to disclose information; or abuse of a privileged position. Convictions would be predicated on the guilty conduct alone, rather than on the resulting gains or losses.
