SFO Director slams Government on serious fraud

The SFO’s record in recent years has not been up to its stellar early years. But I have always been nervous about simply abolishing it, especially as the sucessor agency will not have the same powers as the SFO. NZPA quotes the outgoing SFO Director:

Former Serious Fraud Office director David Bradshaw warned scrapping his agency would terminate high-end white-collar criminal investigations and prosecutions in New Zealand.

And a proposal to ditch special SFO powers would “sound the death knell for fraud investigations in New Zealand”, Mr Bradshaw wrote to Attorney-General Michael Cullen on August 29 last year.

Doesn’t sound good.

On August 29, Mr Bradshaw wrote to Dr Cullen: “The investigation and prosecution of serious and complex white-collar crime is almost certain to become nonexistent if the Serious Fraud Office is subsumed within the Organised Crime Agency.”

Mr Bradshaw said most serious and complex fraud was not organised crime and that a paper prepared by the Ministry of Justice and police for ministers was misleading.

I just hope the Police prove better at serious fraud than they did with electoral fraud.