Former head slams SFO direction

One of the most successful recent heads of the SFO has added her voice to concerns that the fraud office may be forsaking the big company cases it is noted for.

Ros Wright, director of the SFO from 1996 to 2003, is the latest figure to add her concerns about the new SFO head Richard Alderman’s comments that he was interested in consumer frauds.

‘To say he is going to consider consumer fraud is not what the SFO is there for as there are other organisations such as the Office of Fair Trading and trading standards set up to do this,’ she said.

Wright added that the newly created fraud prosecution service, part of the Crown Prosecution Service, was there to tackle mid-sized fraud cases: ‘The BAE Systems case is the sort of case they should be doing.’

Referring to the row over the pursuit of the BAE case, she said: ‘The director should have been completely independent and not been susceptible to political interference and this applies to any investigation.’

Chris Dickson, a former lawyer with the SFO at the time of the BCCI investigation, said: ‘If the SFO is not going to concentrate on the big cases, there’s no-one else who can.’

SFO spokesman Sam Jaffa denied the organisation was changing direction.

‘There’s no let up in investigations involving big ticket corporate cases. The SFO is interested in victims of both individuals and corporate organisations,’ he said.

He added that the SFO has increased its education programme to inform consumers and corporate leaders about the best ways of reducing and preventing fraud.