Mixed news from the SFO over the last two months or so.
- Beginning with reports that confidential information was found "stored" at a cannabis farm in Essex, after it was raided. The information had been mislaid by the SFO and related to the controversial BAE systems case; no response from the Information Commissioner has been reported. Presumably they will look into this breach, bearing in mind how many individual lawyers have been dealt with by the ICO, concerning relatively minor breaches, certainly when compared with this one!
- The SFO did charge Olympus for misleading auditors at their British subsidiary.
- Recently the SFO won a legal argument, put forward by lawyers acting for directors of JJB sports that the former Director of the SFO misdirected himself when delegating his powers on investigations and prosecutions to a deputy. Had this argument been successful it would have raised real concerns about the validity of some thirty SFO investigations and prosecutions. The argument was never going to be an attractive one to any Judge, both on a legal and policy basis, and of course was rejected outright. There were mutterings that the defendants were going to appeal the ruling at the time, even more unattractive were details released about the state of complete chaos the SFO appeared to be in at the time.
- The first SFO proceedings under the Bribery Act 2010 against four individuals were instituted but not yet against a company. Recently David Green QC, the SFO's Director, implied that a prosecution against a company would be forthcoming in good time, he remained tight lipped about any prospect of a deferred prosecution agreement though. DPAs come into force in February 2014, and there are at least two household names, in very different industries, who are tipped to be ready to negotiate such an agreement with the SFO.
- David Green QC was equally as enigmatic about the prospect of other individuals being charged in the Libor prosecution, hinting that there would be more charges and arrests this autumn. He also hinted that there would be definite progress on the Barclays-Qatari probe, this has been going on for over a year and the SFO was given extraordinary funding, from the Treasury in the sum of £2 million to investigate allegations concerning a fee alleged to have been paid by Barclays to Qatar Investment Authority for funding which helped them to avoid taking government bailout funding.
If you or your company are facing an investigation/probe by the SFO, it is vital that you instruct genuinely experienced specialist SFO defence lawyers. We have been successfully defending these investigations/prosecutions and know the SFO very well.
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