The Work of the Serious Fraud Office in Assisting Overseas Serious Fraud Investigations
| Published date | 01 April 1996 |
| Pages | 103-104 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb025764 |
| Date | 01 April 1996 |
| Author | George Staple |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & finance |
Journal of Financial Crime — Vol. 4 No. 2 — Key Comment
KEY COMMENT
The Work of the Serious Fraud Office in Assisting
Overseas Serious Fraud Investigations
George Staple
Almost without exception, the investigation of
serious fraud cases involves the making of
enquiries, and the obtaining of admissible
evidence, overseas.
The realisation that colleagues of the Serious
Fraud Office (SFO) in other countries, police offi-
cers,
prosecutors and examining magistrates, were
experiencing the sort of difficulties obtaining
evidence in England that the SFO was experienc-
ing abroad, led us to look carefully at the arrange-
ments which were in place in the UK for
providing legal assistance to other countries in
serious fraud cases.
In the field of mutual legal assistance, the most
important general reform in recent years came in
1990 with the enactment by Parliament of the
Criminal Justice (International Cooperation) Act.
This brought the UK into line with most other
countries in Europe by enabling requests for legal
assistance involving the use of coercive powers to
be made to the UK during the investigation stage
of criminal cases. It solved the problem experi-
enced in a number of cases under the previous
legal regime whereby the UK was unable to pro-
vide assistance to an overseas prosecutor because
criminal proceedings had not yet been instituted in
that country. The difficulty was that without the
information or evidence requested from the UK,
there was no legal basis for the overseas prosecutor
to institute proceedings.
The use of coercive powers is necessary in every
case in which information or evidence is required
from banks, lawyers, accountants or others who
owe an obligation of confidentiality to clients.
Such institutions and professionals cannot cooper-
ate voluntarily with domestic or overseas investiga-
tions,
however much they would like to do so.
It seemed to us that many of the arguments
which persuaded Lord Roskill to recommend, and
Parliament to enact, the special investigative
powers for domestic serious fraud cases contained
in s. 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1987, applied
equally to overseas serious fraud cases. Lord Run-
cieman's Royal Commission on Criminal Justice
recognised this and made a recommendation. As a
result, Parliament enacted appropriate amendments
to the Criminal Justice Act 1987 and the Criminal
Justice (International Cooperation) Act 1990 in the
Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. The
procedure enacted leaves in place the requirement
for overseas prosecutors and investigators to make
requests, in the first instance, to the Secretary of
State under the Criminal (International Coopera-
tion) Act 1990. Thereafter, if the Secretary of State
considers that the case relates to serious or com-
plex fraud, he can refer it to me, and if I consider
it appropriate, I can accede to it and proceed to
gather the evidence sought.
Since last year, when we started to accept over-
seas requests for assistance, we have received more
than 60. The work is likely to grow. We do not
operate only on the basis of reciprocity — the
problems of international fraud and money laun-
dering (which is a feature of virtually every fraud
case) are far too important for any of us to be
other than full-hearted in our efforts to assist over-
seas colleagues; but we naturally hope to persuade
them, where appropriate, to consider something
similar in their own countries.
The cases which we have handled so far have
come from all five continents. Naturally the
majority came from close to home, principally our
partners in the European Union, with a growing
number from Eastern Europe and the states of the
former Soviet Union. For example, we have been
able to assist Australian Federal Police and prose-
cutors with an important bankruptcy fraud; our
opposite numbers in Norway, Økokrim, with a
large tax fraud; and Italian colleagues with a fraud
involving the funds of the European Union.
Page 103
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