Captains Courageous

Timon Molloy, Editor

Signs that the Government has heard the calls from fraud investigators and lawyers to keep the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) intact come at the eleventh hour. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, told the Financial Times at the end of May that she would defer any proposal to split the agency, which has been haemorrhaging senior staff while waiting to learn if its investigators would go to the new National Crime Agency (NCA), and lawyers to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Director, Richard Alderman will be relieved, but he faces a major challenge to repair the damage wrought by the political prevarication; currently 49 out of 300 posts are unfilled and morale is understandably low – in a staff survey last October only 18% of SFO employees gave management a positive score. It will be the second rebuild Mr Alderman has undertaken since he came in to overhaul an organisation criticised in the De Grazia review for its “‘pass the buck’, risk-averse, ‘complaint’ culture”.