Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPA’s): A Bribe By Another Name?

B P Collins’ criminal team considers whether DPAs are a pragmatic tool of economic crime enforcement — or a Parliament-endorsed bargain that looks uncomfortably like a payment for protection from prosecution.

The Serious Fraud Office has an unenviable task. It is expected to investigate and prosecute some of the most complex fraud, bribery and corruption cases in the country, often involving multinational businesses, offshore structures, vast disclosure exercises and well-funded defence teams. Its purpose is to police the standards by which business is conducted and to ensure that serious economic crime is met with serious consequences.

Yet there is an uncomfortable contradiction at the heart of the modern corporate crime landscape. The SFO prosecutes bribery and corruption, but also operates a statutory mechanism under which large companies can pay substantial sums of money and avoid a criminal prosecution. That mechanism is the Deferred Prosecution Agreement.