Serious fraud office

Frank the tank

Will be disbanded as an individual agency if the tories win the GE.
I wonder who potentially are the beneficiaries of that then, certainly none of those scrounging,scumbag, benefit claimants I'm sure.

pblakeney

Lessons learned from Trump?

vimfuego

Could it just maybe, potentially, be because a major Tory party donor that owns a major company providing services to the oil & gas industry.....wait for it..... has been put under investigation by the SFO for bribery, corruption & money laundering?

just a thought

Bobbinogs

Could it be because the usual cost of prosecutions far outweigh the actual money in question in the first place? I know there is a principle in some of the prosecutions but it is a bit galling when a defendant is found guilty of a fraud of £4.50 and it is then revealed that the investigation took 5 years at a cost of £17,120,29.39 (approx).

bendertherobot

Could be.

Now, Leveson 2........

TheBigBean

Presumably the FCA / the police. Serious fraud cases are handled by the FCA.

fenix

Bobbinogs wrote:

Could it be because the usual cost of prosecutions far outweigh the actual money in question in the first place? I know there is a principle in some of the prosecutions but it is a bit galling when a defendant is found guilty of a fraud of £4.50 and it is then revealed that the investigation took 5 years at a cost of £17,120,29.39 (approx).

I know you're being silly there but there must be a target for the Serious Fraud thing ? So under say a million - its the Trivial Fraud Office you deal with ? There must be guidelines somewhere ?

I know of someone who was investigated by the Taxman for not paying enough. She was just starting off as a PT and as such was limited to the hours she could work - there's only 24 in the day and you can't really pile up clients one after one unless you're incredibly lucky or popular - and she was travelling to gyms around the place so there was a lot of wasted time there.

Whole thing seemed to take a lot of resource from the Tax - several interviews - her accountant dragged in as well. Enormously stressful for both of them.
She hadn't paid that much tax as she simply hadn't earned much. Completely cleared but it seemed well over the top considering the amounts involved.

Then you get BHS etc.....

tangled_metal

Isn't they're SFO going because of it's very poor conviction rate? I might be a bit naive there with that.

BTW I doubt it'll mean an end to the detection activities carried out by the SFO but it is likely to be handled in a similar way to other types of crimes. As in specialist officers will investigate within the body of the forces. Whatever happens there's still going to be the detection/investigation activity going on. It's not like it all will just stop with the SFO's demise as a separate entity.

fenix

Well you say that but it is the Tories...

Stevo_666

Fenix wrote:

Bobbinogs wrote:

Could it be because the usual cost of prosecutions far outweigh the actual money in question in the first place? I know there is a principle in some of the prosecutions but it is a bit galling when a defendant is found guilty of a fraud of £4.50 and it is then revealed that the investigation took 5 years at a cost of £17,120,29.39 (approx).

I know you're being silly there but there must be a target for the Serious Fraud thing ? So under say a million - its the Trivial Fraud Office you deal with ? There must be guidelines somewhere ?

I know of someone who was investigated by the Taxman for not paying enough. She was just starting off as a PT and as such was limited to the hours she could work - there's only 24 in the day and you can't really pile up clients one after one unless you're incredibly lucky or popular - and she was travelling to gyms around the place so there was a lot of wasted time there.

Whole thing seemed to take a lot of resource from the Tax - several interviews - her accountant dragged in as well. Enormously stressful for both of them.
She hadn't paid that much tax as she simply hadn't earned much. Completely cleared but it seemed well over the top considering the amounts involved.

Then you get BHS etc.....

To be fair, BHS didn't pay much tax because they didn't make much money either.

orraloon

Stevo 666 wrote:

To be fair, BHS didn't pay much tax because they didn't make much money either.

BHS didn't pay much tax because they didn't declare much profit, surely?

Stevo_666

orraloon wrote:

Stevo 666 wrote:

To be fair, BHS didn't pay much tax because they didn't make much money either.

BHS didn't pay much tax because they didn't declare much profit, surely?

Not a question of how much profit they declared, it was how much profit they made - or failed to make. Which is basically why they went under. I've not seen anything to suggest that they were under-declaring taxes - have you?