The SFO: regaining its mojo?

It has been a difficult few years for the SFO. The organisation has faced criticism from various quarters and suffered a number of serious blows in some of the cases it has handled, all of which have cast the very future of the agency into doubt. For example, in 2010 a Court of Appeal judge described the US$12.7 million penalty handed out in the Innospec case as “wholly inadequate”, and in 2012 the same judge later described aspects of the handling of the Tchenguiz investigation as “sheer incompetence”. These were damning verdicts. Coupled with only a handful of successful prosecutions under the much heralded Bribery Act 2010, many began to question whether the agency was fit for purpose.