Leading lawyer warns: Elite anti-fraud team set up to better fight financial crime

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO), Britain’s main anti-fraud agency, should be merged with the Crown Prosecution Service to better tackle larger financial crimes, according to one of Britain’s leading criminal lawyers.

Claire Montgomery KC said it should be merged when current SFO director Lisa Osofsky steps down as director of the controversial investigative agency over the summer.

“I don’t think a mortal is capable of reversing an institution that has so many structural and systemic problems,” Ms. Montgomery said. She believes she should stop working as a major fraud investigator and prosecutor.

Ms Montgomery, whose clients have included Prince Andrew, Bernie Ecclestone and General Pinochet, said she was a supporter of the SFO when it was formed in 1987, but now believes structural and systemic deficiencies caused things to “go along the cracks.

So-called American-style powers, intended to allow British interrogators to offer deals for testifying witnesses to help convicts be convicted in exchange for more pardons, have instead become a “bureaucratic mess”.

This process “repelled anyone who had a propensity to cooperate. And I think it’s completely counterproductive.”

It is easier for the US Department of Justice to establish corporate social responsibility in the US, she said. “Really, you just need someone who will act on behalf of the company, regardless of their position in the company. That would be enough to take on corporate responsibility. This gives companies a much greater incentive to work with the Justice Department after their business comes under scrutiny,” she said.

“The important thing is that they can handle this deal themselves without resorting to extravagant procedures. And the reason I highlighted this as a major structural difference is because of the Serious Organized Crime and Police Act of 2005, which created a structure for offering a not guilty plea, or alternatively for offering a plea when there is a guilty plea but there is a significantly reduced fine – created this incredibly bureaucratic structure in the UK that is useless for serious fraud.

Ms Osofsky, head of SFO, has already told ministers she will leave the agency at the end of her five-year contract in August 2023. She is credited with several serious fraud allegations and the largest ever fine in a UK corporate conviction – commodity giant Glencore fined £276m after it admitted to running a network of bribery and corruption to facilitate easy access to oil to secure everything. Africa.

Its leadership also faced two investigations into failed prosecutions, both of which were critical of the SFO’s methods and operations.

Criticizing UK fraud investigations in general, she said: “As far as the real interest of the police in fraud is now on the wane, although I don’t think they are interested in prosecuting fraud anywhere.” appeared on a podcast produced by Matrix Chambers, one of the nation’s leading legal groups.

“Localism, brought in by the detectives who directed the actions of local troops, reinforced this. So this scam is now on everyone’s agenda.”

She believes petty scams, where people can still lose thousands of pounds from their savings, are rarely investigated. “Show trials take place in this area from time to time. But the reality is that 99 percent of cases of fraud at this level are not even investigated, let alone prosecuted.”

Her words echo the Judiciary Commission’s fraud report, which concludes that more needs to be done to hold executives accountable for criminal behavior and warns that public confidence in the law and the economy could be undermined if businesses cannot be brought in. accountable for criminal conduct. crimes.

Parliament’s Justice Committee warned last year that the UK was ill-prepared to deal with the continued rise in fraud, which is now estimated to be costing the country at least £4.7bn a year. They called for a revolution to change attitudes towards crime, giving it more priority and resources to help prevent, investigate and prosecute, and improve the situation of victims.