The UK’s first deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) has successfully concluded, the Serious Fraud Office announced today.

Standard Bank (now known as ICBC Standard Bank) has fully complied with the terms of a DPA it agreed to in 2016.

The bank had been ordered to pay nearly $26m (£20.3m) in fines and disgorgement of profits, and pay $6m in compensation to the government of Tanzania. The bank also agreed to commission an external report on its anti-bribery and corruption controls, and to recommend improvements to strengthen its controls, with regular reports to the SFO.

The DPA related to work that a division of the bank based in London carried out in 2012-13 on a $600m private placement of sovereign debt to finance electricity, water and other infrastructure work in Tanzania.

Lisa Osofsky, who took over as director of the SFO in August, said: ‘DPAs are a way of holding companies to account without punishing innocent employees, and are an important tool in changing corporate culture for the better.’

Osofsky told a conference on economic crime in September that DPAs will be at the ‘core’ of her strategy.

Since their introduction in 2014, the SFO has secured four DPAs, including with Tesco and Rolls-Royce, which have seen more than £670m of financial penalties paid to the Treasury.