Wear a wire or face jail, fraud watchdog warns white collar criminals

THE new head of the Serious Fraud Office has revealed plans to bring US crime-fighting tactics to Britain in the battle against corporate criminality.

Lisa Osofsky, a former FBI lawyer who took over at the SFO last August, aims to work with HM Revenue and Customs to uncover wrongdoing by offering tax evaders the opportunity to wear a recording device in exchange for reduced jail time.

“You can spend 20 years in jail for what you did or wear a wire and work with us,” she cautioned white-collar criminals in an interview with the Evening Standard.

Ms Osofsky, who has dual US/UK citizenship, has more than 30 years of experience pursuing wrongdoers and criminals in both the public and private sectors, including the US Department of Justice’s fraud division.

She also promised to help fight the “dirty money” flowing into London and praised the introduction of “unexplained wealth orders” which target illicit cash.

Ms Osofsky added that she had seen American methods of tackling corporate corruption first-hand while working in the US, including the exposure of corruption within football association Fifa.

Chuck Blazer, an American Fifa executive committee member who admitted to accepting bribes over the 1998 and 2010 World Cup bids, later turned informant for the US government as it investigated a scandal.

“I see huge potential out there if you have got folks who have committed criminal acts possibly being willing to work with law enforcement. It’s got to make sense,” Ms Osofsky said.

“Some of my model comes from my earlier days when we often had the Internal Revenue Service on any drug case. The more we can work together to root out those bad actors, the better.”

At the end of last year the SFO came under fire after two former Tesco directors were cleared of fraud in relation to the supermarket’s £263m accounting scandal. A judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to convict Chris Bush and John Scouler of knowing that income was being wrongly accounted for in Tesco’s books to meet sales targets and enhance the company’s financial health.

The ruling was seen as a significant defeat for the SFO, which was denied a hearing about the decision by the Court of Appeal.