At the inaugural meeting of the Fraud Lawyers Association in London the Director of the SFO, David Green CB QC laid out his top ten milestones for SFO over the last year.

We’ll look at these in detail over the next week or so (and we’d be interested to hear readers views on them).

In the meantime though, here they are:

1. Restated the role and purpose of the SFO
2. Refocused the SFO’s take-on criteria
3. Re-organised and restructured the SFO
4. An entirely new senior management team
5. Reviewed the caseload we inherited and commenced new investigations and pre-investigation projects
6. Issued new guidance, chiefly on self-reporting and facilitation payments
7. Negotiated a return to “blockbuster” funding in discussion with the Treasury
8. Had an inspection by HMCPSI and encourage a follow-up inspection
9. Expanded our intelligence capability
10. Occupy new premises, culturally different from Elm Street.

The new Director came to office on a clean up ticket and a fanfare of refocussing the office on Serious Fraud.  This recent speech marks a watershed.

While change is evolutional and more work remains, the Director has put down a marker that many of the changes he announced on arrival in office have been actioned.  The proof of the pudding will now be in the eating.

Anticipate news.