There continues to be an increasing appetite amongst authorities around the world to investigate corporates and banks for a range of criminal offices.

Governments are also introducing new criminal offences aimed at corporate conduct. Penalties are increasing and law enforcement authorities are becoming more aggressive.

Most notably, we have seen across Europe:

- increased emphasis on bribery prosecutions in Belgium,

- increase of maximum fines for economic offences to 10% of annual turnover in the Netherlands,

- intensifying levels of prosecution in the tax arena in Germany,

- dual prosecution of market abuse by AMF and criminal authorities ruled unconstitutional in France,

- abandonment of the offence of failing to prevent economic crime in the UK.