Agency in the spotlight

THE investigation into Sanjeev Gupta throws the spotlight onto the Serious Fraud Office and its director Lisa Osofsky.

The SFO has failed in recent years to land any notable blows and as a result has faced repeated calls to be disbanded or reformed.

Last month the trial of two former executives at outsourcer Serco collapsed after the SFO failed to disclose evidence to the defendants in a blow to the agency.

Allegations were that executives Simon Marshall and Nicholas Woods hid millions of profits made from a prison tag contract with the Ministry of Justice between 2011 and 2013. The probe lasted eight years but due to blunders the judge said the trial could not ‘safely and fairly proceed’.

This week Marshall said the SFO did not have ‘anything to do with justice’ and should be shut down. In March 2020 three ex-Barclays bankers – Roger Jenkins, Richard Boath and Tom Kalaris – accused of fraud walked free from the Old Bailey amid further bungled evidence gathering.

The year before that the agency dropped two high-profile probes into Rolls-Royce and Glaxosmithkline.

The failures have put serious pressure on SFO director Osofsky, the former FBI lawyer who took over in 2018 amid a blaze of publicity. She promised to shake up the organisation, but instead conviction rates have fallen to record lows.

Under her tenure Osofsky has frequently taken aim at UK law as the reason for the SFO’s many failures and complained about being underfunded and underpowered.