Serious Fraud Office brought to court cases totalling $188m in 2018

It looks like the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) had a good year, according to their recently-released annual report. The report reveals that a total of $188 million in alleged fraud value for prosecutions were brought to court by the SFO in 2018.

Over the past year, 43 defendants appeared before the courts with seven cases concluding in guilty pleas and three matters finalised with convictions following trials.

“The Serious Fraud Office has had another very good year with the investigation and prosecution of a number of important cases coming to a successful conclusion,” said Julie Read, chief executive and director of the SFO. “I would like to take this opportunity to thank the SFO staff for the tremendous work they do to ensure that we are successful in the investigation and prosecution of cases. Their expertise is unparalleled, and their work underpins the good progress we are making with our strategic aims to prevent fraud and corruption.”

Read pointed to the strengthening of the SFO’s Electronic Forensic Unit (EFU) as vital to this achievement. “We have recruited a second full-time electronic forensic investigator and established a club-funded electronic forensics position,” she said.

Electronic forensic investigators played a key role in the successful conviction of Kang Xu, Gang Chen, and Zongliang Jiang over a $54 million mortgage fraud scheme.

“The cases we investigate generally contain hundreds of thousands of documents or, in our more complex cases, millions,” said Read. “To fundamentally improve our ability to process the growing volume and digital complexity of evidentiary material, the SFO has invested $2.28 million in two new software applications. The new systems provide increased flexibility and automation, and help us to better manage the growing volume of evidence.”