Fighting Fraud in the UK - the interaction of the criminal and the regulatory process

Rosalind Wright, Director of the Serious Fraud Office, was guest speaker at the recent annual reception (held prior to enactment of the Financial Services and Markets Bill) hosted by the Financial Regulation Investigation Group of Chantry Vellacott DFK. She addressed the wider costs of fraud to society, the resourcing problem facing law enforcement and articulated the position of the SFO in relation to the new UK financial services regulator, the Financial Services Authority.

Fraud is an ancient and familiar concept. The Bible, indeed starts off with two fairly stark cases (I must say immediately, with a murder sandwiched between the two), one of which, indeed, if committed nowadays, might well result in criminal proceedings, though not necessarily meriting the expensive attentions of the SFO. Right at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, some of you may recall, the serpent deceived Eve, an unwitting accomplice, into inducing Adam to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and thus precipitated mankind into the mess we are in now. In relation to a mess of a different kind, a few pages further on, Jacob, rightly described as a “smooth man”, defrauded his father Isaac of the mess of pottage due to his brother Esau (“an hairy man”), by impersonating his brother.