March 2014
Deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) are now available in the United Kingdom as a means of resolving criminal investigations of certain serious economic crimes other than by guilty plea, trial or prosecutorial declination.1 U.K. DPAs, which are the product of a lengthy preparation and public consultation period, are modeled after their U.S. analogues, although they carry some structural differences. Like the U.S. authorities, the U.K. authorities have promulgated prosecutorial standards for the use of DPAs. They also have issued sentencing guidelines for cases of fraud, money laundering and bribery, which allow penalties in DPAs and convictions by plea to be benchmarked against expected sentences after trial and conviction.
