Environmental Crime

Environmental crime is increasingly becoming a focus for law enforcement and regulatory agencies, as well as specialist bodies such as the Environment Agency and Natural England. Recent years have seen a greater reliance on asset recovery powers, increases in both sentence lengths and levels of fines and the introduction of new powers to impose civil sanctions  for a variety of environmental offences. Rapid technological advances have facilitated the detection of environmental offending, and have improved the methods for gathering evidence as well as its reliability. Coordinated investigations and prosecutions are becoming more common for conduct that has taken place in more than one jurisdiction, and assistance is regularly provided by police, prosecutorial and judicial authorities overseas.

We have represented corporate and individual clients alike in a wide variety of industries.  Our experience ranges from SFO investigations into the misreporting of environmental information by regulated companies, to the trading by individuals in endangered species.