'Over-lawyering' by the legal profession and the judiciary is making the prosecution of economic crime almost impossible, according to a report by a thinktank proposing the abolition of the Serious Fraud Office. 

In a new paper, the right-wing Institute of Economic Affairs says the office should be replaced by a new 'Serious Economic Crimes Office' (SECO). This would retain the SFO's powers to prosecute fraud, but would have a wider remit, including responsibilities to prevent fraud and the ability to assist the private sector in civil actions against fraudsters. 

Authors Professor Mark Button, Dr Branislav Hock and Dr David Shepherd say SECO ‘should embrace the holistic use of alternative justice mechanisms, using deferred prosecution agreements more widely, establishing a leniency programme, creating a register of serious economic crime offenders and using larger fines’.

The report, titled Replacing the Serious Fraud Office: the case for a new approach to serious economic crime, acknowledges that the SFO is 'delivering societal benefit’ but that its 'inefficiency and sluggish pace thwart its capacity to take on more cases’.

‘Endless reviews and criticisms of the SFO will lead nowhere until the government and the judiciary overcome their historic inertia to address the elephant in the room and reform the criminal courts,’ the authors state. 

‘The impenetrability of the courts is an increasing obstacle to justice because the legal profession and judiciary have over-lawyerised the law in favour of offenders to such an extent that a criminal prosecution of complex economic crime schemes is virtually impossible. As a result, the courts are presently a greater deterrent to prosecution than they are a deterrent to active or would-be economic crime offenders.’

The report suggests that the new SECO could engage pre-approved lawyers on conditional fee agreements to assess the merits of cases involving small and medium enterprises that have been the victims of fraud. It could then support SMEs in pursuing litigation. 'SECO could provide a rapid triage service that assesses the merits of cases and provides honest advice about the options.'

Professor Button, co-director of the Centre for Cybercrime and Economic Crime at the University of Portsmouth, said: ‘The existing structures and approaches are failing to have a significant impact and this report sets out a wide range of innovative reforms and actions to cope with this increasing challenge.’

A SFO spokesperson, who referred to the organisation’s five-year strategy which aims to strengthen the SFO’s preventative functions, said: ‘Since 2020, we have returned over £1 billion to the UK taxpayer from penalties, successfully prosecuted over 20 individuals and companies, and secured the UK’s largest ever corporate sentence.’

 

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