Fraud Focus, a new paper by IEA Academic and Research Director James Forder has been featured in a Financial Times op-ed by Spotlight on Corruption Executive Director Susan Hawley, which urged the government to take SFO reform seriously.

The piece said:

“Calls for a rethink of its very existence have been growing, with recent interventions from one of the country’s top financial crime barristers, Clare Montgomery KC, and former justice secretary Robert Buckland who called for parliament to take an urgent look at the framework for prosecuting economic crime.

“This week the Institute of Economic Affairs think-tank argued that the SFO ‘must be held to have failed’. This is not the first time the future of the agency has been cast into doubt. Five years ago, then prime minister Theresa May committed to merging the SFO into the National Crime Agency. The SFO weathered that storm, but it must be demoralising to be working under a perpetual cloud of criticism and uncertainty.”

Read the full article here.