Navigating the global corruption landscape: How should companies respond?

Navigating the global corruption landscape: How should companies respond?

Business Ethics Debates | read time: 8 min

Published: 18 July 2025

GoodCorporation’s latest business ethics debate at the House of Lords explored how companies should navigate the global corruption landscape in the face of new legislation and changing prosecutorial regimes.  

Hosted by Lord Garnier KC, a driving force behind the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act in the House of Lords, the debate was introduced by Matthew Wagstaff, Director of Legal Services at the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). 

Matthew opened the discussion by outlining the SFO’s core objectives; to tackle serious fraud, get justice for the victims of fraud and corruption and protect the UK’s reputation as a safe place for business. 

SFO’s aims and ambitions 

The primary aim of the SFO is to support the UK Government’s fight against economic crime by rigorously tackling the most serious, complex cases of fraud, bribery and corruption. There is an ambitious determination to pursue new cases at pace, drive prosecutions forward and make swift decisions on when to prosecute.  

Evidence of this can be seen in the SFO’s case load, with more new investigations opened in the last 18 months than in the agency’s entire history. Matthew emphasised that the SFO will be using all the tools and methods at its disposal to bring about successful prosecutions including:

• Covert investigative methods 

• Technology and AI to gather evidence 

• Greater use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) when in the interests of justice 

New SFO Corporate Cooperation Guidance 

Published in April 2025, the new guidance aims to make it easier for companies to report, providing clear instructions for self-reporting, defining non-cooperation and setting out the process for, and benefits of, obtaining a DPA. Matthew encouraged all business leaders to read the new guidance to see the benefit of early self-reporting. 

Prosecutorial partnerships 

Almost every case the SFO works on involves international cooperation between prosecutorial authorities to facilitate evidence gathering across multiple jurisdictions. The recent formation of the International Anti-Corruption Prosecutorial Task Force, the alliance between prosecutorial authorities in the UK, France and Switzerland, established to advance cooperation on corruption cases, is a clear indication of the direction of travel. Matthew emphasised that the SFO expects to see even more cases resulting from the formation of this new alliance and that other like-minded agencies might come forward to join, increasing the reach of anti-corruption enforcement still further. 

From Matthew’s perspective the SFO now has both a clear mission to relentlessly pursue new cases, and all the necessary tools to do this successfully and bring about more prosecutions. 

The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA) 

One such tool is ECCTA, both Lord Garnier and Matthew Wagstaff felt that ECCTA’s expansion of the identification doctrine to include senior managers, already in force, represents one of the most significant developments in tackling economic crime, making it far easier to hold companies to account for wrongdoing. 

In addition, the new Failure to Prevent Fraud offence, coming into effect on 1st September 2025, will also require organisations to shift gear. From September, in-scope companies can be held liable for specified fraud offences committed for the benefit of the company, either by a member of the organisation or a third party. Matthew stressed that the introduction of the Failure to Prevent offence was designed to bring about cultural change and encourage companies to clamp down on fraudulent and misleading practices. 

The debate 

With the September 1st enforcement date of the failure to prevent fraud offence fast-approaching, and the determined focus of the SFO, guests were asked if their organisations would be investing more in their anti-corruption and anti-fraud programmes or whether they felt they already had the necessary systems and processes in place. The discussion explored preparedness for ECCTA and the wider anti-corruption landscape. 

How have companies been preparing for the failure to prevent fraud offence? 

Organisations that felt they had fully prepared outlined the steps they had taken since ECCTA came into force. 

• Reviewing fraud policies and procedures: Companies have been reviewing their existing practices and procedures to ensure the new ECCTA requirements were addressed in their fraud prevention frameworks. Critical to this has been understanding the new specified offences and identifying the policy and procedural changes needed to ensure compliance. Some companies highlighted then need to invest in aligning their existing investigations and speak-up processes with ECCTA requirements to ensure their organisations were able to identify and respond effectively to any signs of potential out-bound fraud.  

• Conducting fraud risk assessments: Fraud risk assessments have been expanded to include the wider outbound fraud offences specified in ECCTA. Understanding where these risks lie across the organisation and its wider operations is essential to getting the right controls in place. In addition, companies also recognised the need to have clear oversight of the wider group of people who could commit fraud on their behalf. Those that felt prepared have undertaken such risk assessments and updated their policies, procedures and training programmes accordingly to address the wider risks.  

Several companies had also reviewed and updated their third-party risk-management tools to help monitor and evaluate the risk of outbound fraud among third parties.  

• Training: Given ECCTA’s expansion of the identification doctrine to include senior managers and the wider scope of fraud offences, care has also been taken to identify those who might be considered as senior managers and ensure they are fully aware of the legislation and their compliance obligations. Many have also invested in updating their training programmes to ensure outbound fraud is properly explained including concepts such as greenwashing and false advertising.  

• Code of Conduct development: In addition to reviewing fraud policies and procedures, some recognised that ECCTA compliance would require the wider staff body to be aware of the newly defined outward fraud risks to ensure the company was properly protected. As such many were also updating their code of conduct to raise awareness of the issues, and how to report any concerns. 

Some companies who were further along in their preparation had also started to review their supplier codes of conduct. 

Challenges associated with ECCTA compliance 

While most companies indicated they felt a decent level of preparedness, a few common challenges were raised:  

• Understanding outbound fraud: While most organisations have a clear understanding of the traditional definition of inward fraud and the procedures needed to mitigate it, evaluating fraud from the perspective of benefit to the company was felt to be harder to do accurately. 
• Risks in non-financial reporting: Companies recognised that more rigour would be needed around non-financial reporting to ensure they did not fall foul of the new misrepresentation offence. While some welcomed the obligation to focus attention on this, others expressed concern that this would create far greater uncertainty about what to report and may lead to less transparency and the possibility of more greenhushing in non-financial and sustainability reporting. 
• Addressing third-party fraud risks:  Addressing third-party fraud risks is a top concern, given ECCTA’s ‘associated persons’ provision holding the company accountable if found benefiting from fraud committed by third parties such as agents, contractors or subsidiaries. Although similar to the existing requirements under legislation such as the UK Bribery Act, managing those at risk of committing outward fraud could pose a significant challenge. 

Ethical culture and tone from the top 

Expanding the debate more widely, corporate culture was felt to be critical to preventing misconduct, requiring a clear tone from the top communicating what is expected and how everyone can contribute. A good compliance culture was described as “an invisible spider’s web touching the whole company”. Companies need to ensure that all areas of the business are aligned with that culture and that it is properly embedded across the whole organisation.  

Some see preparing for ECCTA as an opportunity to emphasise and reinforce company values in a way that ensures teams are supported to operate ethically. To test this, engagement strategies are being used to assess and measure how well values and culture have been embedded across all business functions. Performance metrics for senior leaders are also being introduced to provide tangible evidence of setting the right tone. Others are using this as a chance to double down on their zero-tolerance messaging and stress the importance of doing the right thing, often in response to the rhetoric coming out of the US.  

In some cases, structure is being reviewed to bring ethics, compliance and sustainability together. This would prevent these important functions operating in silos and strengthen the management of sustainability claims to reduce the possibility of misrepresentation. 

This led to a discussion around the potential cascading effect of ECCTA. As the bill was being passed, concerns had been raised that the reduction in the number of companies included in the legislation would substantially reduce its impact in terms of changing corporate behaviour. However, in-scope companies are starting to require the same fraud prevention practices from their suppliers and other third parties who would not otherwise be in-scope, suggesting that the Act will have a wide impact. 

The economics of the Trump slump 

A number of participants in the debate noted the current economic headwinds and the extremely difficult business environment. The increase in sanctions is directly impacting some businesses and their ability to sell. This creates stress in business with increased pressure to meet sales targets, while trying to reinforce the anti-corruption controls and anti-fraud controls to prevent wrong-doing. With budgets constrained, this presents a new challenge for the ethics and compliance team. 

The change to global trading patterns also poses a threat. Some participants noted that supply-chains are shifting meaning that the business is taking on new suppliers, new intermediaries and with it new corruption and fraud risk. 

The GoodCorporation view  

It was clear from the debate that many companies have been carefully studying the ECCTA legislation and developing specific outbound fraud programmes. Those with strong ABC and risk assessment programmes already in place have been particularly well-placed to do this.  

However, it is not too late for anyone still at the early stages of re-evaluating their programmes. GoodCorporation’s Fraud Prevention support has already proved useful to a number of our clients and our framework used as a guide to support both outbound fraud risk assessments as well as reviews of the ‘reasonable procedures’ in place to prevent outbound fraud. 

The constraints on budgets are a significant challenge. We are likely to see more use of digital tools to evaluate ABC and fraud risk and also deployed to the ABC and anti-fraud programmes of suppliers and key intermediaries. GoodCorporation’s investment in the GoodCorporation assessment platform is a key part of our response to this need. 

The SFO’s presentation suggests that the prosecution landscape will become more, not less robust, with agencies working together across borders to share evidence and strengthen prosecution cases. This is helpful for ethics and compliance teams and should be used to reinforce the message to the Board that now is not the time to reduce focus on ethics and compliance. The SFO’s new encouragement and guidance to help companies benefit from self-reporting is welcome. 

GoodCorporation’s view is that the societal costs of corruption and fraud are significant. Ethics and compliance teams can and should use this argument to help colleagues understand why the anti-corruption and anti-fraud programmes are so important, even when budgets are constrained and economic conditions challenging. 

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