BCL associates Greta Barkle and Jonathan
Flynn's article 'Emerging from COVID-19: an
opportunity for prosecutors?' has been published by Fraud
Intelligence.
Here's an extract from the article:
'Criminal lawyers are always asked by their clients how
long they think an investigation or prosecution into allegedly
serious offending will take. Even before the outbreak of COVID-19,
in a justice system crippled by budget cuts and beset with
inefficiencies, the answer would nearly always be measured in
years.
Nowhere has the issue of delay been more acute than in cases
investigated and prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). When
Lisa Osofsky became the Director of the SFO in 2018, it was
optimistically predicted that pace and proactivity would become the
new norms. Despite the Director's best efforts, the figures
tell their own truth. In the last year for which statistics exist
(ending March 2019), the SFO concluded 10 cases. The majority were
for criminal
