SFO’s record shows the need for reform
5 April 2023
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Trade, Development, and Immigration
4 November 2024
Fraud Focus featured in new legal article
Fraud Focus, a new paper by IEA Academic and Research Director James Forder has been featured in an article by Niall Hearty, a partner at Rahman Ravelli solicitors.
The piece said:
“The failings that the IEA highlights include the SFO’s inability to secure convictions of those it investigates. The report says the agency is responsible for a series of expensive and high-profile failed prosecutions, unlawful prosecutions, and breaches of the Civil Service code.
“It adds that despite investigating cases for up to a decade, the SFO often fails to successfully prosecute because of a litany of errors. Such errors have included failing to disclose potentially exculpatory evidence, mishandling documents, using unlawful search warrants, undertaking inadequate legal analysis, making spurious allegations and, in one case, forging a letter.
“The report cites a wide range of SFO cases that have had to be dropped or have collapsed. The failure to convict Tesco executives in 2018 of fraud and false accounting, the collapse of cases against Barclays and some its senior individuals over its 2008 Qatar fundraising, the disclosure errors in the Serco and Unaoil cases and the disastrous 2011 arrest of the brothers Vincent and Robert Tchenguiz over the demise of the Icelandic bank Kaupthing are among the examples detailed by the report.”
Read the full article here.
The piece said:
“The failings that the IEA highlights include the SFO’s inability to secure convictions of those it investigates. The report says the agency is responsible for a series of expensive and high-profile failed prosecutions, unlawful prosecutions, and breaches of the Civil Service code.
“It adds that despite investigating cases for up to a decade, the SFO often fails to successfully prosecute because of a litany of errors. Such errors have included failing to disclose potentially exculpatory evidence, mishandling documents, using unlawful search warrants, undertaking inadequate legal analysis, making spurious allegations and, in one case, forging a letter.
“The report cites a wide range of SFO cases that have had to be dropped or have collapsed. The failure to convict Tesco executives in 2018 of fraud and false accounting, the collapse of cases against Barclays and some its senior individuals over its 2008 Qatar fundraising, the disclosure errors in the Serco and Unaoil cases and the disastrous 2011 arrest of the brothers Vincent and Robert Tchenguiz over the demise of the Icelandic bank Kaupthing are among the examples detailed by the report.”
Read the full article here.
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