p. 45511. Financial Crime
- Jeremy HorderJeremy HorderProfessor of Criminal Law, London School of Economics and Political Science
Abstract
This chapter examines one major example of financial crime: fraud. The importance of financial crime, and of vigorous prosecution policies in relation to it, should not be underestimated. Fraud accounts for no less than one-third of all crimes captured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales. There were 4.3 million fraud offences recorded in the year ending in June 2020. An understanding of fraud, and in particular the way that it reflects corporate activity, is essential to the study of criminal law. The law is now mainly governed by the Fraud Act 2006. The 2006 Act sought to eliminate (a) the law’s reliance on sometimes technical distinctions between different kinds of outcome produced by fraud, and (b) the law’s reliance on ‘deception’ as an element of the wrong. A key is question is whether, in doing this, the 2006 Act made the law too broad in scope.
