Attorney general Jeremy Wright has extended the head of the Serious Fraud Office’s contract for two years.
David Green was appointed director of the SFO in April 2012 for a fixed term due to end in April 2016. His contract will now end in April 2018.
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In January the SFO requested a cash advance of £15m from the Treasury to cover the cost of ongoing investigations including those into the Libor-fixing scandal.
SFO has requested extra funding in four of the last five years. Combined with a request for £10m extra cash last summer, the latest request takes the agency’s expected spend this year to almost £65m – twice its original budget.
The Libor investigation has so far resulted in the conviction of just one man. Six others were acquitted by a jury last month and six more men are due to go on trial in April.
The latter six men – all former employees of Barclays bank – had been due to go on trial next month but this was delayed after Barclays presented new evidence to the SFO.
Other major ongoing investigations include the manipulation of the foreign exchange market, possible accounting fraud at Tesco and allegations of bribery at Rolls Royce.
Announcing the extension, Wright said: “In his time as director of the SFO David Green led a change in the organisation’s approach to prosecuting cases and delivered the first UK Deferred Prosecution Agreement and the first convictions under the Bribery Act 2010. I look forward to working with him in the next phase of his leadership of the Serious Fraud Office.”
Green said: “I am happy to continue as director, and the SFO will continue to take on the sort of cases for which it was designed.”