Anne-Marie Winton comments in Pensions Expert on the new criminal offences proposed to prevent pension mismanagement
The government has said that it plans to go ahead with proposals for new criminal offences to prevent and penalise mismanagement of pension schemes, but enforcing these sanctions may prove challenging.
Anne-Marie Winton agreed that questions remain in terms of how the criminal offences will be enforced.
She said that “it does take them into the unknown, from the regulator’s perspective, about whether they actually are able to collect or would be able to collect evidence that passes that ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ level of test”, used in criminal law.
Anne-Marie highlighted that it is unclear whether fine money will go into the pension scheme or elsewhere – such as the Treasury.
“If it’s not going into the scheme, we haven’t made things better for the scheme have we?” she said.
Read Anne-Marie’s comments in Pensions Expert
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