- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Jeff Dale2024-08-01T15:35:00
Staffing shortages that have plagued the U.K. Serious Fraud Office (SFO) are trending in the right direction since its new director took charge, with the anti-bribery agency forging ahead with initiatives to ensure its future sustainability.
The agency is focusing on re-energizing its work culture by “investing in our people and the tools they need to succeed,” Nick Ephgrave, SFO director, said in its annual report for 2023-24, published Tuesday.
Last year, the SFO admitted in its 2022-23 annual report of high vacancy rates leading to a mixture of temporary staff and counsel that would be unsustainable moving forward. Vacancy rates have eased since then, according to the recent report, falling from 23 percent to 16.3 percent. The agency noted a new methodology being used to calculate staffing shortages.
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The U.K. Serious Fraud Office last month published its five-year strategic plan outlining how it intends to improve information gathering and international cooperation, as well as its enforcement record.
The U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office said in a five-year strategic plan it’s “struggled to keep pace with demand” as ballooning casework shows no signs of slowing down.
When Nick Ephgrave of the Serious Fraud Office said in his maiden speech he favored paying whistleblowers in exchange for information, he might not have been fully aware of the implications, according to legal experts.
German petrochemical parts supplier Aiotec agreed to pay $14.5 million to settle allegations that it engaged in a four-year conspiracy to dismantle and ship a plastics manufacturing plant owned by a U.S. company to Iran, in violation of U.S. sanctions.
Kiromic BioPharma will pay no fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission after self-reporting that it failed to disclose material information about two cancer drugs to investors.
The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority fined the London branch of Australian-based Macquarie Bank Limited more than 13 million pounds (U.S. $16.3 million) for “serious control failures” that allowed a trader to conceal hundreds of fictitious trades over a 20-month period.
