The U.K. Serious Fraud Office secured its first criminal conviction under the Bribery Act, after two men were found guilty Friday of offenses under the 2011 law.
The convictions came as part of an SFO probe into the promotion and sale of biofuel investment products to U.K. investors, the agency said in a statement.
They were found guilty of conspiring to produce false sales invoices, allowing one of them to obtain large commissions from investor’s funds; the transactions were disguised using fake email addresses, Swiss bank accounts and companies registered in the Seychelles and British Virgin Islands, the SFO said.
The two men, along with a third who was convicted of other charges in the case, will be sentenced Monday.
The Bribery Act came into effect in July 2011, and it bars bribery within the U.K., as well as abroad.
Though the SFO was seen as the primary agency to enforce the Bribery Act when it was enacted and implemented, it isn’t the first time the law has been used by U.K. authorities outright: A London court clerk was the first person to be convicted under the law in a case handled by the Crown Prosecution Service; he was sentenced to six years in prison.
Legal experts warned companies not to read too much into the convictions.
“It’s an early Christmas present for the SFO,” said Barry Vitou, a partner at Pinsent Masons LLP who leads the firm’s global corporate crime team. “In 2015, their New Year’s resolution will be to begin a criminal prosecution against a corporate for violations of the Bribery Act, or to enter into a [deferred-prosecution agreement] for violations of the Bribery Act,” he said.
But Roger Best, a partner with magic circle firm Clifford Chance, said the conviction “doesn’t appear to represent a significant development” regarding the assertion of the Bribery Act’s extra-territorial reach, or the corporate offense under the law.
“I don’t think there’s a lesson for companies, but there’s a lesson for people who work for companies, which is that the SFO will pursue private-sector bribery prosecutions of U.K. directors,” he said.
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