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Serious Fraud Office
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) today accused a UK insurance company of failing to prevent international bribery. Representatives of United Insurance Brokers Limited (UIBL) were ordered to appear before Westminster Magistrates’ Court next month. The company is charged with failing to prevent associates from bribing state officials in Ecuador between October 2013 and March 2016. The SFO alleges UIBL’s US-based intermediaries for Ecuador paid bribes in return for the awarding of re-insurance contracts worth US$38 million. If this case proceeds to a contested trial, it will be the first time that an SFO “failure to prevent bribery” case is heard by a jury.
Gambling Commission
Operators are being warned that they face regulatory action if they fail to complete regulatory returns or submit them on time.
The warning follows a spate of fines against operators who have failed to submit a regulatory return in the required timeframes for each type of activity for which they hold a licence. Since October more than ten businesses have been fined up to £750 for not correctly completing and submitting regulatory returns within the required timeframe.
Europol
Europol supported an action led by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Berlin (Germany) and Vilnius (Lithuania), which involved around 1 000 police, tax and customs officers carrying out 200 searches in ten countries. The investigation targeted a vast criminal organisation active in smuggling badly damaged cars from the United States (US) into the European Union (EU), and selling them to end customers after superficial repair, while defrauding the payment of customs duties and committing large-scale value-added tax (VAT) fraud.
