The AG’s office ordered the investigation after a London court of appeal found several failures by the SFO in the case R. v Akle & Anor. The court of appeal’s case concerned Ziad Akle, Unaoil territory manager in Iraq, who was convicted by the Crown Court in 2020 for his role in the Unaoil corruption scheme.
Ultimately, Akle’s conviction was overturned, as were the convictions of ex-Unaoil executive Stephen Whiteley and Paul Bond, an ex-employee of SBM Offshore, for their roles in the corruption scheme. Failures by the SFO were key components in the acquittals of the three cases.
The findings by Sir David Calvert-Smith regarding the SFO’s “fundamental failures” identified “five recurrent themes that were fundamental to the court’s judgment, some of which indicate general organizational issues within the SFO’s control and where failures occurred,” Attorney General (AG) Suella Braverman stated.
The five themes identified in the comprehensive report were:
- Poor communication concerning record-keeping obligations;
- Poor compliance with casework assurance processes;
- Inadequate resourcing of the case;
- Lack of understanding between case team and senior management about management’s priorities and the handling of the case; and
- Overall distrust between the case team and senior management.
Calvert-Smith highlighted a sequence of 17 events that led to the court’s judgment. In that report, he said SFO Director Lisa Osofsky faced “a difficult situation very early in her tenure and made a number of mistakes and misjudgments which, with the benefit of hindsight, she now accepts.”
One of those mistakes concerned Osofsky’s contacts with former Drug Enforcement Administration agent David Tinsley and the overall inappropriate role he played in the case, which the SFO has acknowledged.
Recommendations for Improvement
Following his conclusions, Calvert-Smith made 11 recommendations that were accepted by the Attorney General’s Office and the SFO, which broadly covered the following areas:
Case assurance: All cases should have sufficient resources. All members of case teams should comply fully with case assurance processes and all contact with defendants, suspects and their representatives should be recorded as necessary. Superintendence should be revised and considered further.
Disclosure: All cases should have effective disclosure strategies and management, and the Attorney General’s Office and SFO should work together to identify any necessary changes to the Attorney General’s Disclosure Guidelines.
Personnel: All staff should be able to raise concerns about cases, the relationships between investigators and prosecutors should function as envisaged under the Roskill model, and there should not be ‘interregnum periods’ between directors or general counsel.
The SFO’s Response
In a statement, Osofksy said that implementing the recommendations put forward in the report is a “pressing priority.” She also called the reviews “a sobering read for anyone who believes in the mission and purpose of the SFO, but from the outset we wanted to establish what happened in these two cases and use the findings to improve our performance.”
Osofsky added that today’s SFO is “not the same organization” she inherited. “A new senior leadership team has prioritized investment in technology, introduced a stringent case prioritization system and we have embedded a change program to overhaul the SFO’s working practices and culture,” she said.
AG Braverman said she will be “closely monitoring the SFO’s progress and delivery of that plan and will provide an update to Parliament in November 2022 and February 2023.” 
Jaclyn Jaeger is a contributing editor at Compliance Chief 360° and a freelance business writer based in Manchester, New Hampshire.