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The work of the Serious Fraud Office, its structure and its powers are described. Changes in court procedure have resulted in improvements in time and clarity of presentation of evidence in these most serious and complex cases of fraud. The SFO has developed a computer‐based document‐control system, providing accurate records and also creating a database for instant recall.

The Serious Fraud Office was set up on the recommendation of the Roskill Committee by the Criminal Justice Act 1987. It is responsible for the investigation and prosecution of serious and complex fraud. In recent years the Office has been criticised for the way in which it handles cases, largely as a result of the perception that there have been too many acquittals in the cases which it has chosen to prosecute. In this interview, Matthew Weait discusses the role and aims and problems of the Office with its present Director, George Staple. Mr Staple considers the problems which the Office faces, the extent to which he considers criticism justified and wider issues relating to the effective prosecution of fraud. George Staple, 52, took up the post of Director in April 1992. Formerly senior litigation Partner of Clifford Chance, he was appointed in 1986 as a Companies Act Inspector. Between 1987 and 1991 he sat as a Chairman of the Authorisation and Disciplinary Tribunal of the Securities Association and the Securities and Futures Authority. For many years Mr Staple was a member of the Commercial Court Committee and served as Treasurer of the Law Society from 1989 to 1992.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate threats to dissolve the New Zealand Serious Fraud Office (SFO) as interpreted through the public press.

An institutional approach is adopted in this case, and the analysis is driven by Oliver's understandings of antecedents to deinstitutionalization. Relevant press articles are reviewed, and SFO history and New Zealand socio‐political context inform the analysis.

The paper identifies over 1,800 articles (September 2003 to October 2008) and analyses the content of those 157 that contain views on the SFO itself. This analysis reveals that while there is a strong political antecedent to the proposed change, the media is dominated by weakly evidenced but emotive functional and social arguments. The susceptibility of the SFO to political influence, and a less‐than‐fully engaged media, is shown to provide a risk of deinstitutionalization to this politically dependent office.

Conclusions suggest how a relatively new and possibly politically naïve organisation may be, by necessity, starting to come to terms with its own external dependencies.

The SFO may be evolving new relational norms in response to its own vulnerabilities in a political environment. There may be lessons for others in this analysis of a norming process, and further research into such processes would be a rich area for further study.

The contribution is in forming an understanding of the media patterns and in analysing what they convey as to the threatened deinstituitonalization of the SFO.

The New Zealand Serious Fraud Office (NZSFO) was set up in 1989 in response to issues arising out of the 1980s financial crisis, in particular the share‐market crash of 1987. In the short period of about a year the total sum thought to be involved in corporate fraud schemes in New Zealand had increased dramatically, from NZ$10m–15m before 1988 to NZ$50m–70m in 1989. Consequently, the Department of Justice proposed setting up a specialist institution and legal mechanisms for the investigation of serious or complex fraud.

Describes the 1985 Roskill Committee Report on Fraud Trials as a success: of its 112 recommendations only two were not implemented. Explains why Roskill is nevertheless often criticised: there is a lack of resources for fraud investigation, while the amount of computer‐generated data in modern fraud cases is huge, and the demands on the jury much greater. Outlines the work of the Serious Fraud Office, of which the author is Director. Asks what can be done to remedy the lack of resources, given that the number of police squads dedicated to fraud investigation has shrunk over recent years. Assesses how the nature of fraud itself has changed since Roskill: there is much more of it, it is more closely linked with general criminality, and it uses the ever more sophisticated methods of information technology. Suggests that there should be a general offence of fraud, that juries might be replaced in fraud cases, and that there should be more public education about fraud. Concludes that more emphasis on public‐private partnerships will help fight economic crime.

This paper reviews the issues surrounding jury trials in fraud cases in the context of the Home Office's consultation document in early 1998. It includes an account of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and concludes that a greater willingness to use regulatory institutions to deal with misconduct is essential to permitting the SFO, as the leading fraud prosecution agency, to discharge its responsibilities effectively.

The purpose of this study is to assess, since the 2006 Fraud Review, recommendations, strategies and consequential organisational and other changes at national, regional and local levels relating to fraud, using the Northeast as a case study. It also notes that implementation may have been influenced by institutional changes and related emerging governmental policy agendas and institutional changes relating to organised crime, terrorism and cybercrime.

The research for the paper was undertaken by desk reviews of primary and secondary material. The paper also involved face-to-face interviews with personnel from the regional fraud unit and the three North-east police forces’ fraud units. The interviews were semi-structured and were conducted on grounds of anonymity for the personnel and the forces involved, with a focus on trends and issues. The personnel were invited to comment on a draft of the paper in terms of accuracy of the information they provided; no revisions or additions were proposed. Interpretation of that information is the sole responsibility of the author.

The paper finds that, despite the decade since the Fraud Review, issues of effectiveness or relevance of national fraud strategies, absence of incentives and identifiable benefits and continuous influence of competing agendas on police priorities continue to marginalise fraud as a mainstream police function and limit the level of resource committed to what also continues to be a rising area of criminality.

The research looks at the recommendations, strategies and consequential organisational and other changes at national, regional and local levels through implementation by four policing units in the North-east. It also notes that implementation may have been influenced by institutional changes and related emerging governmental policy agendas and institutional changes relating to organised crime, terrorism and cybercrime. While the research is limited in that, it draws on the experience of three local and one regional fraud unit; its findings support further research about the implementation of strategies and agendas in practice on the ground.

The research validates many of the findings by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and supports the need to review national strategies to ensure effective implementation at local level for what also continues to be a rising area of criminality.

The research raises important issues concerning public concern over fraud where majority of frauds are of high volume, low value with low levels of recovery and usually targeted at individuals but where the policing responses are targeted elsewhere.

The research is the first study on the local implementation of national strategies on fraud and raises positive and less positive aspects of how far national strategies and intentions are addressed on the ground.

In England and Wales the Crown Prosecutor is a lawyer who is independent from the investigation and is charged with assessing evidence and evaluating whether a prosecution should proceed or not. The CPS is intentionally authorised to override the decisions of the police to curb any potentially over‐zealous investigations and evidence gathering that might subsequently tarnish the standards of procedure in the courts when applying the criminal law. The increasingly burdensome rules of disclosure have made demands on the CPS which are akin to the overall requirement on the investigating magistrate of civil law jurisdictions to find the truth by examination of the prosecution and defence evidence. The recent moves to return a limited number of lawyers to police stations is a further indication that the future role of the CPS may include an active rather than solely passive role in evidence gathering. The Serious Fraud Office are directly involved in the investigation and prosecution of complex frauds. This office has statutory and judicial authority to conduct investigations which follow an inquisitorial rather than accusatorial model. The juge d'instruction in France has authority to direct and control police investigations and subsequently to compile a dossier of evidence for presentation before a trial court. This paper points out that there are close parallels emerging in pre‐trial procedures in England and Wales and in France and the criticisms of the role of the investigating magistrate, the ‘sick man’, may hold lessons to be learnt for investigators and prosecutors within this jurisdiction.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the element of trust that is common to and underpins both the successful legitimate business venture and the successful fraud.

The paper questions whether the cumulative effect of financial crime in our society may ultimately be more serious than in terms of damaging personal and business relationships than the actual losses incurred.

Law enforcement agencies must not lose sight of the significant impact that financial crime is having on our everyday activities. There is a pressing need to ensure that within our communities trust remains a power for good within business relationships.

The paper was aimed at raising the awareness of the intangible impact of white collar crime on our society and the need to avoid becoming complacent about such offending at a time when the law enforcement focus in many countries tends to be on violent offending in our community.

The paper will be of interest to those working in the field of economic crime or researching the topic.

The purpose of this study is to explore how a large UK police force – Greater Manchester Police (GMP) – sought during a period of continuing budget reductions to take a cost-effective approach to certain types of fraud through the establishment of a central Volume Fraud Team (VFT), which in turn would also have wider operational resource benefits across the force. It then explores the decision to merge that team with its existing serious and complex fraud team.

The research was undertaken over a period of two years by interview and desk review to explain the internal processes which underpinned the approach and the initial outcomes. It discusses why the approach was short lived as a consequence of other factors.

The paper sets out briefly the context of changes to the policing of fraud since 1979 and describes the GMP decision-making processes that established a centralised response to volume fraud and major (serious and complex) fraud. The paper assesses the available data on the approach and whether the changes facilitated a more effective means of addressing fraud and other internal policing priorities. It then discusses the decision in 2014 to merge the staff resources for volume and major frauds in response to identified policy trends in fraud investigations and changes in fraud reporting.

The single case study is limited in terms of focus and in applicability to the wider law enforcement response to fraud.

The research discusses practitioner issues arising from the complexities of balancing resources and priorities against changing trends and patterns of criminal activity in a specific area of policing.

The research is an original study into the internal and external change agendas, and there are, therefore, wider lessons for the policing of fraud in the UK.