{"id":64707,"date":"2025-05-01T04:12:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T04:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/64707\/"},"modified":"2025-05-01T04:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T04:12:08","slug":"britains-shrinking-fraud-watchdog-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/64707\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s shrinking fraud watchdog \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

But finance minister Reeves\u2019 announcement that U.K. civil service costs will be cut 15 percent<\/a> puts extra pressure on the SFO’s workforce. \u201cIt is madness,\u201d said an economic crime expert at an NGO. \u201cThe government should, at the very least, exclude the enforcement bodies from cuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s an untenable situation where your enforcement capacity depends on civil service headcount numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taking on more cases would require more funding. Although the government provided additional cash to the agency late last year, it is \u201cpeanuts\u201d compared to what the agency needs, according to the economic crime expert.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The agency\u2019s budget in 2025\/6 was \u00a388.9 million, which pales in comparison to the \u00a31.8 billion it contributed<\/a> to the Treasury over the last decade through the fines and penalties it has gathered. And even internally, there is a push for radical change to the tools in its armory.<\/p>\n

In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission \u2014 America\u2019s main finance watchdog \u2014 offers whistleblowers a portion of the fines it collects from their information. In 2023, the agency issued<\/a> its largest-ever award to a whistleblower, nearly $279 million. There\u2019s no comparable offering for blowing the whistle on fraud and bribery in the U.K.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhistleblowers take us to the answers more quickly. The problem with whistleblowing in this country is that there is no benefit to the whistleblowing,\u201d said Nick Ephgrave, the director of the SFO, in an interview with POLITICO.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ephgrave disagreed that individuals should come forward with information simply because it is the right thing to do, and not be paid for doing so. \u201cDo we live in the real world or not? These are people that have got status, they’ve got a mortgage to pay, they’ve got kids probably at private school, they’ve got membership of clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe solution is inside information,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But finance minister Reeves\u2019 announcement that U.K. civil service costs will be cut 15 percent puts extra pressure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[1213,331,748,1194,2437,6215,2575,30,6217,18333,2438,1396,7964,393,728,474,33189,349,4884,1195,33190,806,2452,3933,12337,1144,3209,45,2453,48,6506,712,811,1199,22793,33191,413,16,15,49,1764,6507],"class_list":{"0":"post-64707","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-americas","11":"tag-banks","12":"tag-britain","13":"tag-budget","14":"tag-companies","15":"tag-cooperation","16":"tag-corruption","17":"tag-courts","18":"tag-david-lammy","19":"tag-democratic-republic-of-congo","20":"tag-department","21":"tag-dumping-duties","22":"tag-enforcement","23":"tag-england","24":"tag-environment","25":"tag-finance","26":"tag-financial-crime-fraud","27":"tag-fraud","28":"tag-great-britain","29":"tag-growth","30":"tag-health-professionals-workforce","31":"tag-industry","32":"tag-media","33":"tag-mining","34":"tag-missions","35":"tag-northern-ireland","36":"tag-payments","37":"tag-playbook","38":"tag-policing","39":"tag-rights","40":"tag-saudi-arabia","41":"tag-scotland","42":"tag-security","43":"tag-services","44":"tag-skills","45":"tag-south-sudan","46":"tag-space","47":"tag-uk","48":"tag-united-kingdom","49":"tag-united-states","50":"tag-wales","51":"tag-water"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}