Has the corporate veil become even more transparent?

22.06.2023 The UK Home Office has proposed to reform the "identification doctrine" so that companies can be held criminally liable for crimes committed by management.

This measure makes it possible to include sufficiently high-ranking employees, as well as senior managers, among those who can be considered the "guiding mind and will" of the enterprise if there are suspicions of fraud, money laundering or bribery. According to the statement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, this is the largest reform of the identification doctrine in more than 50 years. It will accompany the crime of "failure to prevent fraud", which has already been added to the bill.

Previously, the interpretation of the identification doctrine was usually limited to directors of boards of directors, especially chief executives.

However, the government suspects that complex management structures are sometimes deliberately used to hide who are the key decision makers in the company.
Amendments to the bill related to the identification doctrine were first proposed at the committee stage in November 2022, but were withdrawn when the government promised to introduce the "failure to prevent fraud" measure instead. Since then, several new measures have been added to the bill.

According to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), additional fraud prevention measures are a "welcome step" to improve corporate behavior. The bill will also expand the powers of the National Crime Agency to conduct a preliminary investigation.

Link to source: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/more-action-to-fight-fraud-bribery-and-other-economic-crime