The intense Fraud Office and the Coronavirus Challenge
While they are uniquely testing times for a lot of of those in business, everything is perhaps least straightforward for the Serious Fraud Office . Even though many in business and finance will – it is hoped – go back to workplaces at some point in the near future to resume the things they did in pre-virus times, it is unlikely to be so feasible for the SFO.
By time things return to anything like normal, the SFO's version of normal may vary significantly from what it really only agreed to be a few months ago. This could, with time, be a chance for the company to exhibit its mettle and expertise because it meets a number of new or increased challenges. But any perceived failure to satisfy those challenges can lead to questions regarding its effectiveness. It is, in the end, only 3 years ago the then Pm intended to hand the SFO's duties to the National Crime Agency.
Such a plan was eventually dropped. But now the SFO will need to juggle its existing workload – so it has a tendency to tackle with mixed results – with what is certain to be a slew of new investigations as a result of coronavirus.
There is likely to be a public interest in – and powerful backing in the public for – investigations and prosecutions of companies and individuals suspected of creating or working to make fraudulent gains from the healthcare challenges posed by the pandemic. Whether this is by price fixing of pharmaceuticals or equipment, pandemic-related investment fraud, the sale of counterfeit medical products or online selling of goods at hugely inflated prices or goods that do not exist, the SFO might have a huge amount of pandemic-related work coming its way. Having had its fingers burnt a long time ago using its failed Operation Holbein investigation into pharmaceutical price fixing – which was, at the time, the SFO's biggest ever prosecution – it may not be relishing any more such cases.
Yet there is a strong possibility such cases will arrive at the SFO's door. As will allegations associated with those looking to use real or non-existent charities as vehicles for fraud. It might also be a huge surprise when the government's Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme wasn't targeted by those who work in organised crime looking to make fraudulent gains. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has additionally acknowledged that the payment scheme for the self-employed can also be vulnerable to fraud.
The SFO, therefore, may soon have a bigger workload because of recent events. But such events could also indirectly result in the SFO facing more challenges from the past.
Warren Buffett's quote, “It’s only if the tide goes out that you discover who’s been swimming naked,'' might not have won any awards for good taste however the point it makes remains valid – when the economy takes a turn for the worse we get to see who wasn't as legitimate as they appeared before the bad times. The economical issues that coronavirus prompts may reveal historic fraud that will otherwise have remained hidden. Which might produce more work with the SFO.
The situation only at that very moment may imply that the SFO has time for you to examine cases that have been within the in-tray for a long time while more pressing ones demanded immediate attention. The SFO is now capable of do some spring cleaning in relation to the cases that do not usually receive prompt action; either since they're not considered urgent or because they were way too time consuming to make swift progress on. The SFO Director Lisa Osofsky has often spoke of her desire to have her agency to move swiftly and efficiently. The lockdown may well give the agency the chance to tackle investigations that have been lingering too much time for her liking.
The SFO could, therefore, see the virus-related lockdown like a blessing that provides the chance to play catch-up on some cases. But it could equally arrived at regard it as a curse, if and when the avalanche of expected virus-related fraud cases arrives on its desks.
Precisely how such matters will develop is impossible to forecast with pinpoint accuracy. But what can be said with a degree of certainty is that the SFO is facing numerous challenges. They may not all be new. They might not every arrive at the same time. But exactly how it manages the workload that COVID-19 looks set to induce is going to be give a true indicator of the SFO's own health.
