As I reported in July, Nick Ephgrave QPM is the first non-lawyer to run the Serious Fraud Office. He started work five weeks ago and I met him the other day at a reception to mark the retirement of Max Hill KC as director of public prosecutions. Ephgrave, who had worked with Hill on the Damilola Taylor case, is an impressive public speaker and spoke warmly of his former colleague.
As home secretary and later as prime minister, Theresa May wanted to merge the Serious Fraud Office into the National Crime Agency. That much-criticised plan was abandoned in 2017 but the Serious Fraud Office has never quite recovered. The challenge Ephgrave now faces is to persuade the attorney general, Victoria Prentis KC — who supervises his work — that he can achieve his aim of “building the strong, dynamic and pragmatic authority the UK needs to fight today’s most heinous economic crimes”.
The office, which uniquely acts as both an investigator and a prosecutor, is certainly not strong, dynamic or pragmatic at the moment. But Ephgrave may prove to be just the person to turn it round.
Meanwhile, the government has appointed Jonathan Fisher KC to conduct a short, sharp review of fraud law. Fisher will investigate “how the disclosure regime is working in a digital age and if fraud offences, including those specified in the Fraud Act 2006, meet the challenges of investigating and prosecuting modern fraud”.
The solicitor David Coker, writing in The Times, said that Fisher had accepted a vast mandate and faced a formidable task. Corker argued that the law had taken a wrong turn in 1997 by placing the burden of disclosing “unused material” on the prosecution.
Ephgrave and Fisher will both want to listen to the latest podcast in the Double Jeopardy series presented by Tim Owen KC and Lord Macdonald of River Glaven KC. They have interviewed Ian Winter KC, who has successfully defended a number of defendants against prosecutions by the Serious Fraud Office.
Like many of those taking part in this excellent series, Winter appears more forthcoming in his responses to well-informed professional colleagues than he might have been if questioned by an outsider. He discusses the problems of disclosure and explains very clearly why so many Serious Fraud Office prosecutions have collapsed in the past.
One reason, I’m sure, is that the prosecutor cannot afford to instruct Winter. On this occasion, though, his advice is entirely free.
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Episode 40 of Double Jeopardy begins with a moving tribute to Heather Rogers KC, who died suddenly this month at the age of 64. She was widely admired and is much missed.