Karl Turner – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Karl Turner on 2016-04-13.

To ask the Attorney General, what procedures are in place to share information from the Serious Fraud Office’s dedicated reporting channel with other investigatory bodies and prosecuting authorities.

Jeremy Wright

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is an intelligence led agency and follows the National Intelligence Model (NIM) when sharing information with law enforcement partners.

Every report made to the SFO is assessed by a member of its Intelligence Unit in conjunction with other information available. The SFO passes information on to others when it has appropriate intelligence to share. This could be information from a single report, or a collated intelligence package.

The vast majority of reports made to the SFO are not matters which it can investigate, and are more appropriate for the police or other agencies. Action Fraud is the UK’s national fraud reporting centre. Individuals are asked to report matters directly to them so that Action Fraud can make best use of their information. They will also be given a crime report number for future reference.

The table below shows the minimum number of intelligence referrals made by the SFO to other agencies which are directly referable to reports made through the dedicated reporting channel(1) since these statistics have been recorded. It also shows the number of SFO investigations opened since 2012 where the initial report to the SFO came through its online reporting system.

1. The SFO does not record statistical information about all types of referrals that it makes to other agencies that are directly referable to reports made through the dedicated reporting channel, so the total number may be higher.