Events will unfold he said cryptically
“Events will unfold,” he said cryptically.Mr Heseltine blamed the Tories’ split on Europe on Margaret Thatcher, saying she “divided the Conservative Party that is the inheritance”.Mr Heseltine renewed his call for Mr Hague to bring pro-Europeans, including Kenneth Clarke, into his Shadow Cabinet.. If first impressions count at all then it’s difficult to regard Rosalind Wright as the hard face of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). Britain’s most senior female prosecutor possesses a disarming giggle and a penchant for chocolate biscuits not qualities normally associated with tackling complex fraud in the City. If first impressions count at all then it’s difficult to regard Rosalind Wright as the hard face of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). Britain’s most senior female prosecutor possesses a disarming giggle and a penchant for chocolate biscuits not qualities normally associated with tackling complex fraud in the City.
But as many blue-collar crooks will testify, it would be a mistake to treat Mrs Wright anything less than seriously.Since Mrs Wright took over at the head of the SFO four years ago she has potted more than 135 con-artists, fraudsters and international money launderers. The SFO convicts nine out of every 10 defendants it prosecutes and takes on 20 new cases each year with a running caseload of around 80 at any given time.During her four-year tenure she has even managed to turn around the negative publicity which left the SFO crippled with the nickname, the Seriously Flawed Office.
This, she readily admits, has been one of the most challenging aspects of her job. Now Mrs Wright, a mother of three grown-up children, is ready to broaden her brief and take on more fraud cases.She says she is concerned that so many police forces appear to be running down their fraud squads. “The sort of frauds that the SFO sees, which covers international fraud and money laundering and huge international corruption, don’t figure in the police force’s list of policing priorities except at the City of London.” For this reason, says Mrs Wright, “you can’t expect the police to devote a large amount of manpower to the problem.”In acknowledging the political reality, she suggests that fraud can be tackled by other means. One is to allow the victims of fraud to take civil action to recover their losses and another is to hand over more cases to the regulators. But Mrs Wright also sees a third way letting the SFO prosecute more crime. “I’m ready to take on more cases,” she says.Legislation restricts the Serious Fraud Office to prosecutions of serious or complex fraud this is interpreted as crime involving more than £1m. While Mrs Wright is happy with these terms of reference, she says: “There is a lot fraud which falls within that category which is not coming to us at the moment, and unfortunately not being dealt with by anybody.”Mrs Wright, who once practised in the same chambers as Derry Irvine, has the kind of background in these matters that ensures ministers will listen to her proposals.
At the Securities and Futures Authority (SFA) she led a team of prosecuting lawyers responsible for the authority’s disciplinary function. Between 1983 and 1987, she was the Head of the DPP’s Fraud Investigation Group covering cases in the City of London and Metropolitan Police areas.As a lawyer herself, she says she can’t help noticing that solicitors have become increasingly embroiled in international fraud. The National Criminal Intelligence Service has long suspected that lawyers have been helping international criminals launder the proceeds of their crimes. But so far very few cases have been successfully proven against solicitors.Mrs Wright says the SFO is now investigating the business affairs of at least six solicitors in the biggest ever crackdown on money laundering in the legal profession. The lawyers are suspected of being involved in separate multi-million-pound frauds. “A solicitor can actually participate in major international scams,” she says, “and use the firm’s client account to facilitate the laundering of dirty money, perhaps from abroad, sometimes from domestic fraud. This is a very worrying trend.”For many years, the Law Society has argued that its members are only unwittingly involved in money laundering.
But Mrs Wright counters: “The solicitor would be an active participant in the fraud from the beginning, being involved in the conspiracy, being a central part of it and lending his or her client account for the purpose of washing the money through.” She goes on to explain: “It’s a very convenient way, because they are lending the reputation of a good solicitors firm to a criminal enterprise and giving it that tinge of respectability, and that’s why it’s so dangerous.”The lawyers have been reported to the police by either the Law Society or by their own firms. Mrs Wright said their firms were usually “shocked” when they heard of the allegations, and that the traders were “invariably” removed from the partnerships once their actions had been reported to the police.”We are seeing more and more professionals, particularly solicitors, being drawn into the money laundering net,” she says. “This isn’t a suggestion that solicitors don’t realise what they are letting themselves in for.”Last month the Financial Services Authority said that it had uncovered “significant control weaknesses” at a number of UK banks that held accounts with links to Nigeria. A three-month investigation into anti-money-laundering controls at 23 banks in the UK, where accounts linked to the family of the late President Abacha and close associates had been identified, found the weaknesses at 15 banks.Although eight of the banks have strengthened their anti-laundering controls since the accounts were opened, the FSA said it was having to set the remaining banks strict deadlines to correct their failings. The FSA would not identify the banks but said these included UK banks, as well as banks from inside and outside the EU.The SFO believes many banks are reluctant to disclose fraud. Mrs Wright says: “I know that there is a lot of fraud of considerable size that does not get reported to the police, us and the regulators.” Banks don’t like to expose the fact that they have been the victim of fraud, she explained. “They would prefer to recover the amounts through the civil process or through negotiation rather than actually expose it through the authorities.” The reason for this is that such a revelation would lower confidence in the banking systems.
“They don’t want to expose it to public scrutiny.”But she was more concerned that the police were turning away reports of fraud made by insurance companies because they did not have the manpower to deal with them. Yet some of these reports involved “serial fraudulent in- surance claimants”.Furthermore, because the City institutions have alternative means of settling these disputed claims, the police do not always want to get involved. The result is that many cases dealt with as civil matters have included elements of fraud that were not being prosecuted.. Underground advertising…