UK: NCIS and SFO get new bosses

The UK enforcement community's two most high profile fraud and money laundering resources are both due for a change of leader, and will get new helmsmen in April 2003.

The National Criminal Intelligence Service has been led by John Abbottt, a quiet and unassuming man of considerable intellect, for the past five years. Under Abbott, NCIS has developed a highly effective computerised network of information gathering to ease the job of financial institutions and his own organisation. As one of the collators of the Egmont group's information paper on money laundering typologies, Abbott "came out" - he personally has never had the public profile adopted (not entirely willingly) by the heads of some other FIUs. Under his stewardship, NCIS managed to obtain hugely increased funding and to, for the first time, have some computing power that was capable of handling the rush of information that comes in from banks and others. Abbott has been a frequent critic of accounting and legal professionals for their dismal record of reporting suspicious transactions. Abbott retires on 31 March, a fact known for some time.

He will be replaced by Peter Hampson, who has been the Chief Constable of West Mercia Constabulary since 1999. From 1967 to 1994, he served in the Metropolitan Police in all ranks from Constable to Chief Superintendent. In 1994 he became Assistant Chief Constable of Crime and Operations in Surrey and then worked as an Assistant Inspector of Constabulary from 1996 until 1999. For the last 12 months he has held the Chair of the Association of Chief Police Officers Business Crime Area.

In London's Bloomsbury (or rather in a street that borders it), the Serious Fraud Office is to get the man widely expected to have taken top spot last time around. Robert Wardle, an assistant director at the SFO for ten years will take over from the redoubtable Rosalind Wright who will have been at NCIS for five years when she leaves towards the end of April. Mrs Wright is forthright and not afraid to trample on toes when it suits her purpose. Whilst she has been at the SFO, the conviction rate has climbed to over 84%.

Mrs Wright arrived at Elm Street when it was having a nightmare. The Press were on the attack. George Staple, the former Director was returning to private practice having simply had enough (but having stuck it out until the end of his agreed period) and the SFO's reputation was, unfairly, in tatters. It is true that it does itself no favours - its telephone handling is on a par with the worst in the world, its security staff are clueless and its building is a battleship grey, fortress-like monstrosity in a part of London peppered with lovely, if slightly run down, buildings.

And it has some very stong powers and some not terribly secret private arrangements with foreign enforcement agencies. Simply, criminals don't like it and they have better PR. Wright has steadily and, even, quietly led a revolution in the SFO. It is much more focussed and there has been much less bad news in the press. Although there is no doubt that more good news should come out of it than actually does.

The success rate has brought its own problems with criticisms that the SFO takes on only cases it sees as "winnable." Under Staple, the criticism was that it was not selective enough. The SFO is in an impossible position because when it loses, it gets huge publicity, often because it loses in the big name cases.

Before Wright's time, a cad called Roger Levitt who stole a huge amount of money from elderly investors. The SFO got a conviction and the Judge gave him 180 hours community service. But the SFO got the blame in the newspapers.

Wardle joined the SFO when it was formed in 1998. At the SFO he worked as a Case Controller and was made Assistant Director in 1992. From 1996 to 2000 he was head of the policy division with responsibility for liaison with Whitehall, regulators, the legal professions and the police, and for dealing with all policy matters including proposed legislation. He is the most business-like of the senior team - incisive and decisive with a speed that his calm demeanor belies. In October 2000 he moved to an operational division with overall responsibility for about thirty cases, and for vetting cases referred to the Serious Fraud Office. He has been the senior SFO lawyer responsible for the Guinness, Polly Peck and CWS cases.

Wardle was widely tipped to take over from Staple but his copybook was blotted by a series of problems: he was the man who (again unfairly) got the blame for Azil Nadir fleeing the country in the middle of the Polly Peck investigation. And the prosecution of Nadir's right hand woman, Elizabeth Forsyth was undermined by a Court of Appeal that, in large measure, re-wrote more than a hundred years' of case law to suit get the result the Court wanted. Wardle oversaw the trial of Guiness directors and others, only to find that the Courts released those convicted and then the European Court of Human Rights found that information obtained compulsorily in a company investigation could not be passed to the SFO to form the basis of a criminal charge and so convictions were overturned. When Staple left, the SFO had to be seen to be getting some new blood in at the top. And Ros Wright was strong, respected and untainted.

But on any sensible analysis, the reason for the problems was primarily because the criminals chased by the SFO often operate at the edges of the law and so the law is often uncertain.

That the SFO goes after cases that are now less marginal is, in many cases, true and that has led to the increase in conviction rate. But the fact is also that there have been no really big scandals in the UK for some years and it is often those that are the most difficult to win. It is those scandals that have taken up huge amounts of resources and have led to problems in courts as a result of long and complex trials that are often beyond the wit of a jury.

Wardle's planned five years in post may well see a change in the law to have long and complex fraud cases tried by a panel rather than by a jury. If so, the costs of trials may well come down and the opportunity for criminals to defend on the basis of confusion (so causing a doubt) may well result in cases being settled. The SFO has already been doing much of the sort of work that is required to obtain confiscation under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and if costs are reduced, then it is possible that the SFO might actually become a law enforcement profit centre under Wardle's tenure.

That he takes over an SFO that is, largely, what it should have been all along is a tribute to both Staple and Wright and to his own work within the organisation.