Despite opening three investigations at the start of his tenure, the SFO's new director, Sir Nick Ephgrave, only went on to open a further two by the end of his first year in post
- In February 2024, the SFO announced its investigation into Signature Group regarding a property fraud which attracted over a thousand investors globally before the company’s collapse in 2020. The SFO's announcement was accompanied by dawn raids carried out with the NCA which saw the arrest of four individuals.
- In the following month, the SFO carried out raids on two sites and made three arrests as part of an investigation into an alleged fraud by Carlauren Group which affected 600 investors of care homes. The company entered administration in 2019.
- In November the SFO announced an investigation into suspected bribery and corruption involving the multi-national aviation and defence electronics firm the Thales Group. The Thales Group is headquartered in Paris and has subsidiaries in a number of jurisdictions including the UK. The SFO and the French authority Parquet National Financier are conducting a joint investigation in their respective jurisdictions.
This effort continues the trend of fewer investigations being opened each year. The figure dropped to a ten-year low of one in 2022 and has failed to rise to the higher numbers of previous years. In its strategic plan for 2022-2025 the SFO pledged to speed up the rate of its investigations and so it may be that this focus has resulted in fewer investigations.
Other trends emerging from the new investigations in 2024 are the domestic nature of the cases and the focus on fraud against large groups of the public. These new investigations also demonstrate a continuation of the trend for investigations into companies in administration. Both new investigations relate to investor fraud which is a shift from the SFO's previous and ongoing prosecutions of a broader mix of cases such as those involving bribery, corruption, accounting fraud and individuals. Ephgrave's stated commitment to working with other agencies and for taking cases "from flash to bang quite quickly" also seems to be borne out by the repeated use of dawn raids and arrests by NCA officers in investigations now initiated on his watch.