SFO five-year strategy resets approach to tackling financial crime

The SFO recently published its strategy for the five years between 2024 and 2029. The strategy has a strong focus on technology and highlights the importance of multi-disciplinary investigation teams to tackle the most complex financial crime. The strategy includes a five-year workforce plan designed to retain and attract highly skilled people, such as lawyers, forensic accountants and investigators. This emphasis on organisational culture is significant in the document, defining the agency’s values and how it wants to look and feel both internally and externally. Some might interpret the prominence of these themes as a response to the increased public scrutiny of law enforcement agencies’ culture in the UK. But it certainly reflects the SFO wanting to set out its stall with a refreshed DNA.

On operational priorities, the strategy provides further insight to adjustments being made under the SFO’s new leadership. For example, the shorter term 2024-25 business plan references piloting opportunities for prevention work by the agency, “working alongside our partners to cut serious fraud, bribery and corruption off at the source”. Following earlier statements by director Nick Ephgrave, immediate priorities also include maximising the use of covert capabilities by the agency and reinforcing the ways in which corporates can engage voluntarily with the SFO.   Since his appointment as director Nick Ephgrave has consistently said that he wants to speed up cases, welcoming the enhancement of investigative powers to allow the SFO to demand evidence at the pre-formal investigation stage, not just when businesses have been involved in international bribery or corruption.

The strategy states that the SFO must “find ways to obtain evidence more quickly and build compelling cases in shorter timescales”. This includes exploring the incentivisation options for whistleblowers. To date, law enforcement in the UK has resisted incentivising whistleblowers largely for fear that it may be seen to taint evidence. However, there is little doubt that securing whistleblower evidence as well as the SFO making more use of assisting offenders are now seen as important avenues for the agency to achieve its enforcement strategy.

The strategy also says that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning could help speed up case resolution and there will be a renewed push by the SFO for a disclosure regime fit for today’s casework challenges. Technology will be key for the SFO, but this will require investment and a commitment to staff training. The use and capabilities of AI are fast changing. It means that all organisations (and not just the SFO) need to be mindful of the changing landscape and the ongoing investment commitments this may bring. For instance, the costs, both in time and money, needed to keep AI tools up to date as well as the skills underpinning them by keeping staff training up to date.

The strategy appears to accept this stating: “Most importantly, we must think beyond specific tools or technology. Alongside our partners we need to develop the long-term skills and knowledge that will allow us to stay ahead of the curve as our world continues to change.”

In this respect, previous disclosure failings highlighted in a report by Brian Altman KC, which led to the collapse of several high profile SFO prosecutions, should be kept in mind. While human error in the process was largely to blame, the report said that IT systems were “unreliable”.