“Corruption too serious to be used as a political football”

London, 8th April 2016 - Responding to stories that the Serious Fraud Office would be taken over by the National Crime Agency, Robert Barrington, Executive Director of Transparency International UK, said:

 “This would be an ill-conceived knee-jerk response to the crisis caused by the Panama Papers.  Industry experts are agreed that with proper funding, the SFO has the attributes to do the job: including combined teams of investigators and prosecutors, having corruption as a priority and independence from political interference. If the government believes there is a better way of prosecuting corruption in the UK than the SFO, it should set out a clear plan for doing so, listen to experts, and subject its plan to proper scrutiny. “

 “A simpler alternative is to allocate proper funding to the SFO.  Corruption is too serious to be used as a political football, and a  Home Office raid on the authority and independence of the Serious Fraud Office would undermine the UK's credibility just as the Prime Minister is planning an Anti-Corruption Summit.  The government should think again.”

***ENDS***

 Read more from Robert Barrington here on what an effective SFO would look like.