How to respond to a dawn raid: A guide for sports organisations

"We have been through more doors in the last three months than in the last three years"   Nick Ephgrave QPM, Director, Serious Fraud Office.

The powers of the UK's leading criminal enforcement agencies, like the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), have been significantly strengthened by two new regimes contained in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, which are intended to make it easier to prosecute commercial organisations for corporate crimes. Both offences, and how they could impact on sports businesses, have been analysed in previous LawInSport articles by this author (see: Senior Managers Offence^[1] and Failure To Prevent Fraud^[2]).

Criminal investigations for offences including bribery, fraud and tax evasion undertaken by agencies such as the SFO and HMRC can often start with a dawn raid and, as the opening quote suggests, the authorities may now have an increased appetite to launch raids. Raids can often generate very negative media coverage, and sports organisations are not immune. Both Newcastle United^[3] and West Ham United^[4] found themselves in the media spotlight following high-profile dawn raids by HMRC in 2017. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) can also use dawn raids in regulatory enforcement action taken to stop antI-competitive practices such as price fixing.

Businesses across many sectors frequently undergo dawn raid training.  This article explains what a dawn raid is, and how businesses in the sports sector should prepare to mitigate the risks that a dawn raid could present.

• What is a dawn raid?
• Pre-planning
• The initial response – reception staff
• The response team
• Preparing for the inspection/review
• Managing an on-going dawn raid
• Review and copying data/documents
• Privileged and irrelevant documents
• Power to ask questions
• PR/communication strategy