Welcome to Allen & Overy’s Investigations Insight blog, sharing with you our views and insights into the latest trends, risks and developments in business crime and financial services investigations
Parent company atones for the crimes of a subsidiary
18 July 2019 - Post by:
The fifth DPA, between the SFO and Serco Geografix Ltd, is the first in which a parent company has undertaken to pay a penalty and oversee a group wide reinforcement of its compliance programme even though it was not liable for the underlying fraud and false accounting by its subsidiary. Also worthy of note are › Read More
Should I breach confidentiality to report suspected criminality?
03 July 2019 - Post by:
A recent case throws up some interesting issues concerning when it is OK (and when it is not OK) to breach confidence in order to report suspected criminality. The case concerned some private investigators who decided to report their clients for suspected criminal conduct, rather than keep confidential the results of their investigation: Saab & › Read More
SFO rhetoric about cooperating witnesses continues to pile on the pressure
20 June 2019 - Post by:
Lisa Osofsky, Director of the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO), has talked about wanting to bring cases to life for juries by relying on cooperating offenders to give evidence against senior individuals. She reinforced this message last week at the GIR Live, Women in Investigations conference. The SFO’s aim here is to bring more senior › Read More
My turn to ask the SFO a few questions
14 June 2019 - Post by:
Normally it is my clients who are on the receiving end of questions from the SFO, so I was delighted to be given the opportunity by GIR on Wednesday to be able to put some questions to the Director of the SFO, Lisa Osofsky, about a number of issues that individuals and companies have been › Read More
Things you might have missed from the FCA’s enforcement action against Carphone Warehouse
13 May 2019 - Post by:
The UK Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) enforcement action against Carphone Warehouse (CPW) featured the second focused resolution agreement that the FCA has entered into. Importantly, this is the first focused resolution agreement that has resulted in a change being made to the financial penalty that the FCA imposed. However, relatively little air time has been › Read More