UK's Serious Fraud Office set for first plea deal, with ICBC Standard Bank

LONDON (Reuters) - London-headquartered ICBC Standard Bank Plc is the first company to enter a new type of plea deal with Britain's Serious Fraud Office, a move which one lawyer called a "defining moment" in English criminal law.

The SFO said on Thursday its first proposed deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) has already been approved in principle by senior judge Brian Leveson and final approval would be sought at a London court hearing on Nov. 30.

A DPA is a court-approved deal under which a company is charged with wrongdoing but legal proceedings are suspended in return for accepting a range of sanctions that can include a fine, payment of compensation and monitoring.

Introduced last year, DPAs offer another tool for prosecutors struggling to bring to book corporate wrongdoers due to the cost and complexity of cross border investigations. But they can also fuel criticism that corrupt companies can pay fines to avoid prosecution.

ICBC Standard Bank specialises in global commodities, fixed income, currencies and equities and is 60 percent owned by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and 40 percent by South Africa's Standard Bank Group (SBKJ.J).

Standard Bank Group said in a statement in Johannesburg that fines over events that took place in 2012 and 2013 were not expected to exceed $40 million. The banks said they were not permitted to provide any further details about the case before Monday.

"This is a defining moment in the criminal arena and lays the path for companies to avoid prosecution where they meet the requirements of a DPA and self-report," said Eversheds's lawyer Neill Blundell.

"In the future, those companies uncovering criminality will see the DPA route as a very serious option. This will be the first of many. The question that many observers will now ask is whether this route is a let-off for companies who admit wrongdoing and who would have previously faced prosecution."

The SFO has said a company might avoid prosecution if it had been "genuinely proactive" since discovering misconduct, where misconduct was isolated, had occurred some time ago, might have been committed by a "rogue director" and was reported promptly.

However, if firms provide inaccurate, misleading or incomplete information to secure a DPA, the SFO says it wants to be able to instigate fresh proceedings for the same offence.

In practice, there are high legal hurdles for corporate prosecutions.

Under English law, a corporation is only criminally liable if bosses - the "controlling mind" - are culpable. The 2010 Bribery Act introduced an offence of "failing to prevent" bribery, but this does not extend to other criminal offences.

The SFO has said it expects to secure two DPAs this year.

(Reporting by Kirstin Ridley; Editing by Greg Mahlich)