The Australian Law Reform Commission has published the Final Report from its Review of Corporate Criminal Responsibility. The report makes wide-ranging recommendations for a significant recalibration of corporate criminal laws.
Some significant recommendations include:
- Reserving criminal punishment for the most serious misconduct.
- Creating a single mechanism for holding companies criminally liable for misconduct by employees and other associates.
- A current Bill before Parliament contains a new offence where companies ‘fail to prevent’ foreign bribery. This model of criminal offence should be expanded to cover a wider range of activities of Australian companies overseas.
- A new criminal offence for companies that have systems of conduct or patterns of behaviour that result in many contraventions of civil penalty provisions.
- More specific guidance on the factors that courts will consider in imposing penalties on corporations.
- An expansion of the range of non-monetary penalties that can be imposed on corporations, in barring companies from certain activities, mandatory remediation and redress.
- Development of a national regime to debar companies found guilty of certain offences from public sector contracts.
Read full report here: