The Serious Fraud Office is currently assessing whether to investigate a recently-failed finance company, and is just waiting on legal advice about some of the firm's activities before it makes its decision.
Serious Fraud Office CEO Adam Feeley, along with the SFO's general manager for financial markets and corporate fraud Simon McArley, told media in Parliament Buildings that outside its investigation into Hanover Finance, the SFO had largely finished its operations looking into finance company collapses bar one assessment it was still undertaking.
“It’s a more recent collapse – it doesn’t date back to ’06, ’07 or ’08," McArley said.
It would possibly take two weeks before the SFO decided whether to investigate the company or not.
“When they come up for an assessment, sometimes a decision is made, yes we’ll investigate, sometimes a decision is, no we won’t, and other times actually we need to go back and get more information," Feeley said.
“We just need to get some legal advice around the legalities of some of the activities. We’re waiting on that. We’ll look at it internally then we may get someone external to give us a view,” McArley said.
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