SIOG6105 | Civil and criminal parallel investigations

Managing the risk of parallel Investigations

The HMRC Legal Group Criminal Advisory team have advised that, it is possible for HMRC to conduct simultaneous criminal and civil investigations. In most cases is it not necessary to halt the issue of civil penalties due to ongoing criminal proceedings.

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Dominant purpose test

When progressing a civil or criminal investigation, it is important to ensure the correct power is used.

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Officers need to consider the nature of their investigation when deciding which powers to use. The abuse of civil powers or any breach of the right to silence safeguards to obtain information where the dominant purpose is to gather evidence for a prosecution carries the risk that this evidence will be excluded

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Section 17 of the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 can then be applied to information that has been properly obtained. This states that:

“Information acquired by the Revenue and Customs in connection with a function may be used by them in connection with any other function”.

Therefore, information properly obtained as part of a civil investigation using a civil power can be put to further use as evidence in a parallel criminal investigation and vice versa.