Welcome to our fourth annual Serious Fraud Office (SFO) Enforcement review.
In this review we look into the SFO's investigations into individuals and corporates during 2023. We then look ahead to 2024 and consider a number of topics, including what to expect from the SFO under the leadership of its new director, former assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner Nick Ephgrave QPM, the trials that the SFO prosecuted over the year, new investigations opened by the SFO and what this tells us about the direction that the SFO might be headed in 2024.
The year ahead will be particularly interesting following the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 receiving royal assent in October. This brings with it significant amendments to the existing doctrine of corporate criminal liability, meaning it will be much easier for the SFO, and others, to prosecute corporates for economic crimes on the basis of the criminal involvement of a senior manager, rather than having to identify the directing mind and will of the company. This change came into force, on 26 December. We are also expecting the new failure to prevent fraud offence to come into force in the second half of 2024 which is likely to lead, eventually, to additional deferred prosecution agreements by the SFO for this offence.
In 2023, we successfully represented our client Robb Simms-Davies who was prosecuted by the SFO for bribery and money laundering offences. Our client, who was the first defendant on the indictment was charged alongside two other executives and was acquitted, alongside his two co-defendants, in January 2023 following a 15-week trial.