Launching Forge ESG

The ideas behind Forge ESG have been several years in development. We realised that we had a common professional interest during a conversation while watching our kids play football on a Saturday morning.

At one point during our early discussions, we realised the answer to the problems we had identified with the current state of the market was to do our own thing and to offer something new, different, and ideally suited needs of clients in 2025. We were clear from the off that this would not involve creating a new law firm following a model that has hardly changed in 400 years.

We soon realised the best part about doing our own thing was that we had a blank page and the opportunity to create something that put the customer at the centre of the idea.

Forging Quality with Agility and Accessibility

Unrivalled expertise

We have selected the best barristers, risk management advisors and compliance experts whose experience is unrivalled. This is who you want at the coal face, guiding your business through an increasingly complex regulatory environment. These experts will be supported by the most advanced technology, including AI, to enhance speed and efficiency.

Cost efficient

For each engagement, we will assemble a small team of the relevant experts. We have no fixed costs and no hierarchy from the paralegal to partner, each duplicating work and charging for it. The absence of the traditional overheads means we can be competitive on cost while being uncompromising on quality and expertise.

Accessible for all

We strive to create a service where top-level advice and guidance is available and accessible to a broad range of potential clients.

We are structured to enable us to be flexible in supporting the needs of clients ranging from family offices, private companies, private equity and large multinational companies.

The desire for an inclusive approach to our work is supported by top quality Third Sector expertise amongst our panel of experts. A core guiding principle at Forge ESG is that quality advice and support ought to be accessible across all sectors.

In short, we aim to be the ideal partner for organisations and businesses seeking cost-effective advice without compromising on excellence.

Forging legal, risk and compliance advice – Breaking Silos

An integrated approach to managing financial crime risks is necessary if companies are to achieve sustainable solutions and avoid future problems.

In every instance where there is a bribery issue, a sanctions breach, forced labour, or a money laundering red flag, a company is not only faced with a legal risk, it is also faced with compliance issues and sometimes cultural problems. We have created an approach that meets the complexity of this challenge.

The failure to ensure that both legal and risk and compliance issues are properly considered in the context of internal investigations results in missed opportunities to learn lessons and to empower companies with the opportunity to respond effectively to problems.

This is a disaster on several fronts. Chief amongst these is the fact that such a systemic failure is likely to undermine a company’s ability to avail itself of a defence under the “failure to prevent” offences be that bribery, fraud or tax evasion because it would be difficult to argue that such an approach was “adequate” or “reasonable” as a measure to present the relevant risk from materialising.

The approach we take is designed to break down these silos.

To illustrate our approach by way of a practical example we will outline how we help our clients to navigate the intersection between forced labour risk and money laundering.

Featured Practice Area and Topic

Practice Area: Financial Crime Supply Chain Advisory

Topic: Forced Labour Risk and Money Laundering

Forge ESG is uniquely positioned to advise companies to navigate the challenges at the nexus of forced labour and money laundering risks. The World Uyghur Congress (‘WUC’) case, a landmark UK Court of Appeal judgment delivered in July 2024, catapulted forced labour risk to the very top of companies’ risk registers. Where the UK Modern Slavery Act has long been accused of lacking teeth, the potential of exposure to money laundering risk is real and companies should be responding in a meaningful and proportionate way.

This judgment means that companies engaging in transactions involving goods suspected of being produced with forced labour cannot rely on the payment of a fair market value to absolve them of liability for money laundering. The ruling indicates that such goods can still be classified as criminal property, exposing these companies to money laundering charges under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Forced labour was the relevant criminal conduct in the WUC case but the principle extends to any criminality in the supply chain.

NGOs targeting companies – forced labour risk

NGOs are targeting the Boards of companies with Notices under section 196 of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 for the purpose of fixing “senior managers” of a company with the requisite knowledge of criminality within the company’s supply chain. Once the Board or senior managers of the company are served with a dossier containing evidence of forced labour in the company’s supply chain, the company itself is deemed to be possessed of that knowledge. NGOs are highly innovative in their approach, and often work in tandem with investigative journalists which presents a high risk of reputational damage for companies that are targeted.

The threshold for a money laundering offence is the suspicion that revenue is tainted by criminality and so this pincer movement can put a company in a position where it commits an offence under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. This leaves companies vulnerable to criminal prosecution or private prosecution.

How can we help?

We will work with companies to help them to take pre-emptive steps to prevent such a scenario from happening. Our combination of legal, risk-assessment and risk-mitigation consultants include barristers who appeared in the Word Uyghur Congress case and supply chain risk experts with a working knowledge of the Xinjiang region of China. We will work in partnership with leading due diligence providers to provide a wrap-around service that provides our clients with a peace of mind in what is a very challenging area.

We are well-placed to advise boards and senior managers who have received such Notices on their liability and how best to respond to them.

Jonathan Chibafa - Co-Founder and Chief Legal Officer

Jamie Simmonds - Co-Founder