Internet fraudsters are a dogged, persistent bunch. Such is their scatter-gun approach that even Robert Wardle, for nearly five years Britain's top fraudbuster, finds himself spending the first few minutes of his working day deleting emails trying to entice him into handing over his bank details in exchange for a big cheque. "You would have thought that sending these emails to the director-general of the Serious Fraud Office was completely pointless but no – I have to deal with it, much like everybody else," he says resignedly. "We all do. Nobody is immune. We have firewalls but they always seem to find a way through them."
Mr Wardle usually seeks to catch up with the SFO's deputy director and its head of corporate services and accountancy when he arrives at his office – never later than 8.45am – before formal meetings start. This morning, he also reviews notes from as many as possible of the SFO's 70 or so active cases, along with requests for help from overseas, referred to him by the Home Office.
10am
The day's first meeting is with one of the SFO's six operational divisions. "It is really to go through cases with the lawyers who control them and the senior accountant. We discuss progress, any problems, delays and why delays are happening. One of the real difficulties is the time it sometimes takes for cases to get investigated and go to court," says Mr Wardle. The ever-increasing time this takes (about five years on average) is one of the biggest disappointments of his tenure, he explains. Next is a routine meeting with the Office of Fair Trading's head of prosecutions, Simon Williams, a former colleague of Mr Wardle's at the SFO. The SFO has, along with the OFT, the right to prosecute companies under cartel-busting provisions within the Enterprise Act. It is primarily the OFT's area but the SFO will become involved in large and complex cases.
The Northern Rock affair exposed that regulators do not always enjoy the best of relationships, but Mr Wardle says this is not a problem for the SFO. A lot of that, perhaps, is down to him. His time at the top (which ends in April) has not been easy, but Mr Wardle has managed to keep a dry sense of humour. "Our relationships are good and we have good structures in place to ensure that, in cases where there is concern, it is brought out at the right level," he adds.
12pm
Jessica de Grazia, a US lawyer and former senior prosecutor, arrives. She has been hired to review the SFO's processes and see if there are ways to reduce the endless delays that continue to dog cases. Mr Wardle says: "Jessica has been comparing [us] with the way things are done in New York. She has experience of being a prosecutor there and we are discussing some of the emerging findings, for example the difficulties we have in relation to disclosure of material, the differences in approach of judges with respect to trial management and also our internal structures – whether we are missing out on tricks and whether this can be remedied, or are we just stuck with the differences."
1pm
It's time for a short walk to Mr Wardle's favourite Italian restaurant, L'Osteria, for a chicken and avocado salad and a glass of chianti with the SFO's chief accountant, Stephen Lowe. Mr Lowe's responsibilities include looking after the SFO's graphics department, which presents the often horribly complex evidence used in fraud trials in a form that juries can understand. Its work was instrumental in the successful prosecution of Michael Bright, the former chief executive of Independent Insurance, who last year was ordered to spend seven years at Her Majesty's pleasure.
Bright brought the debt-ridden company to its knees and it collapsed with the loss of more than 1,000 jobs, costing the Financial Services Authority £357m in compensation. Many observers felt the SFO would find it impossible to prove fraud "beyond all reasonable doubt" in the case, given the complex accounting procedures used by insurance companies. But they were wrong. It was one of the SFO's greatest successes during Mr Wardle's time at the top, he says. "We had an excellent team, an excellent prosecutor, and an excellent judge." Interestingly, he does not advocate doing away with juries in fraud cases. "My concern is less whether a jury can understand a case. I'm sure they can but, in some larger cases, there is a manageability problem.
"You often lose one, possibly two and sometimes more jurors through attrition. In order to keep a case manageable, we might sever some of the charges, so there are often restrictions on the evidence you can present. There are some cases, therefore, where juries are shown only part of the picture where it would have been right for them to see the whole picture. That is not a criticism of juries at all. They are, I think, a lot sharper than people realise."
2.30pm
Mr Wardle meets a junior member of the evidence management team, explaining: "She wanted to talk about training opportunities and how we might make it better. That's something I'm very keen on." The SFO trains people to a high standard. Mr Wardle says it is important to be able to do this, given the current public sector pay restraints and the fact that staff are easily lured away by higher salaries in the private sector. "That is something I'm very concerned about," he says.
Mr Wardle then meets a solicitor from a company which has discovered irregularities and immediately alerted the SFO. "This is something that has happened two or three times," says Mr Wardle, who would like to see it happen often. "It enables us to get evidence early and carry out the investigation more quickly, which is in everyone's interest."
6pm
This evening's engagement is a reception at the Royal Courts of Justice with judges from Snaresbrook Crown Court in East London. Mr Wardle has to enter via a side entrance, largely because the judges' get-together has been overshadowed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and his now infamous speech on shariah law and its place in Britain. It is a judge who will rule on the legality of Mr Wardle's decision to halt on "national security" grounds the £2m inquiry into alleged secret arms payments by BAE Systems to the Saudi royal family.
Anti-arms trade groups have called for a judicial review of the matter which has put Mr Wardle at the centre of a controversy as big as the one facing the Archbishop. For his part, Mr Wardle denies allegations that he was bullied into his decision by politicians.
"I would say we have been extremely open throughout about what we have done and the reasons we have done it," he insists. "The decision I made was because I believed that continuing the investigation would have a result that jeopardised our ability to combat terrorists, and that lives were at risk. I would not have stopped the investigation had I not thought that. It went very much against the grain.
"To have to stop the case for the reasons we did is something that can hardly be described as palatable. I had to rely, of course, on the intelligence assessment if we pursued the investigation but I also went further. I had the opportunity to talk to the ambassador to Saudi Arabia and I was quite convinced by his expertise that this was not a line we should pursue. That is why I made the decision that was one of the most difficult I have ever taken – but I still believe it was the right one."
Comments