Can the SFO restore its credibility?

Things rarely appear straightforward with the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). Winning streaks never last too long, cases often raise awkward questions about its operations, and its failings are high profile.

Its recent track record bears this out: successes have been enjoyed while notable failures have had to be endured.

Starting with the good news, the SFO can take credit for its AOG Technics conviction and the conclusion of the deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with Ultra Electronics.

The former saw AOG’s director sentenced in February to four years and eight months for orchestrating a worldwide, £39 million aircraft engine parts fraud that risked public safety and caused widespread disruption to the aviation industry. It was a satisfactory outcome for the SFO, which coordinated its investigation with regulators here and overseas. Similarly, the DPA with Ultra Electronics is a feather in the SFO’s cap. It is the agency’s first DPA in five years, resulted in the company paying a £10 million fine plus £4.8 million in SFO costs, and represents the successful conclusion of an aerospace bribery investigation that began in 2018.

Any present-day assessment of the SFO’s abilities has to take into account the failed prosecution of London Mining. This was a case that collapsed earlier this year – after almost a decade of investigation—when the SFO made the embarrassing admission that almost 600,000 items of evidence had been missed when using its old e-discovery software. Red faces at the agency were accompanied by a review of disclosure in 20 of its cases.

It was a pitiful end to a major, long-running corruption investigation and another instance of the SFO tripping itself up due to difficulties with disclosure, case management and charging decisions. It is further evidence of the deep operational challenges the SFO faces. And it is yet another example of a lengthy investigation and major public expenditure leading to little more than years of uncertainty for those investigated and a prosecution that fails before the evidence has even been tested by a jury.

If we also consider last week’s SFO decision to end its two-year fraud investigation into the Signature Group, 2026 could hardly be viewed (so far at least) as the year the agency won its big battles. And SFO critics could point to the fact that AOG’s director had pleaded guilty and that Ultra Electronics had self-reported its wrongdoing, whereas the agency struggled when London Mining and the Signature Group made it clear they weren’t going to meekly accept their fate.

In fairness, credit should be given to the SFO for “getting the job done” with those two successes. But the Ultra Electronics outcome raises the question of whether DPAs are becoming the SFO’s most reliable route to major corporate enforcement outcomes. That case could be viewed as a sign that the agency is looking to such settlements because it struggles to secure convictions in contested and complex cases. And the AOG case was a relatively focused fraud prosecution; certainly not comparable in scale or complexity to historic SFO cases that have involved multinational companies, sophisticated corporate structures and systemic international corruption.