Enron’s legacy in English law
In an article in this week’s Legal Week, John Ellison, a partner with KPMG and the Chairman of its Forensic UK practice, and another, highlight the differences between US and English law in fraud cases set against the background of Enron.
The main differences noted there are in the length of sentences, in fraud trial procedural issues including the debate on the role of juries in fraud trials, and the absence of plea bargaining in the UK. (Note in contrast the Sentencing Game, in this week’s Forbes: “[T]he financial fraud sentences start to look out of control when weighed against what murderers and others of that ilk often get.”) They come to the conclusion that Enron “may show that it was a catalyst finally to put into effect reforms that have been debated for a number of years.”
The main sources and entities mentioned in the article:
- Serious Fraud Office
- Legal Secretariat to the Law Officers’ Fraud Review
- Fraud Act 2006
- R v Rigby and others (Defense counsel: Mark Milliken-Smith QC of 2 Bedford Row)
- Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill
- Criminal Justice Act 2003
For more specifically discussing the recently enacted Fraud Act, see this article by Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP in the same issue of Legal Week. (The magazine’s theme this week is ‘white-collar crime, fraud and expert witnesses’.) The Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill is discussed in a previous guest post in the context of the Paulson Committee’s Interim Report. And finally, for a recent exchange between The D&O Diary and WV&Z on fraud in the UK, please see here and here.