Businesses in India, across industry sectors, face a growing enforcement environment. In the wake of multiple high-profile instances of corporate fraud and mismanagement, the traditional forbearance principle has been replaced by a heightened enforcement-driven business atmosphere, with new and amended legislation increasingly criminalising acts and omissions by officers of corporate entities. In recent times, the government has also grappled with the best way to address rising social media-driven online crimes (often with severe offline impact), again favouring criminal action.
As such, corporates face more stringent and broad-based ABC and AML laws, the prospect of judicially-awarded exemplary damages (and personal manager liability) for environmental damage, and an ongoing overhaul of labour codes and data privacy laws, along with the prospective requirement to manage non-financial externalities of business by filing business responsibility reports on ESG efforts.
India currently does not offer DPAs or voluntary reporting. In fact, prosecution is pursued in fits and bursts, and the involvement of multiple enforcement authorities at both the state and central level, deriving authority from a number of laws, means prosecutions can be cumbersome and long drawn.
Prashant Mara (Managing Partner) and Devina Deshpande (Principal Associate) of BTG Legal, in this session of “Eating Compliance for Breakfast” explore the current propensity towards prosecution, the key areas in which criminal action impacts business and what this might mean for your operations in India.
Date: 26 November 2020 Time: 9 AM GMT and 2:30 PM IST
You can access the recording in this link.