BCL partner, Richard Sallybanks has been quoted in The Times’ article ‘SFO head Lisa Osofsky faces questions over investigator’s failings ‘ discussing the SFO’s recent failures in bribery trials as she faces a landmark review of her agency’s performance.

*Here is an extract from the article:

“At the committee hearing, Osofsky, who took over the top job at the SFO in 2018, told MPs that “disclosure is a very big issue for all of us in law enforcement”.

She pointed out that over the past year the CPS, which prosecutes most alleged crimes in England and Wales, handled more than 1,600 cases that could not proceed because of disclosure failures.

“It is not a perfect system,” said Osofsky, who fended off suggestions from Shaun Bailey, a Conservative lawyer-MP on the committee, that the SFO should outsource its disclosure process to private practice law firms who had state-ofthe- art technology that was not available in-house at the agency.

While Osofsky responded that she did not object in principle to outsourcing, “it would involve spending an awful lot of public money”.

She also warned that there was a risk in doing so because “we haven’t yet had judicial approval to be doing that in a criminal context”.

Richard Sallybanks, a partner at BCL Solicitors, added that the SFO “will hope that [Calvert-Smith’s] findings and recommendations will provide a basis on which it can draw a line under, and move on from the failings which have dogged . . . the Unaoil [and] Serco prosecutions.”

A spokesman for the SFO said the agency welcomed Calvert-Smith’s appointment and that it “will co-operate fully with his review”.”

*This article was published by The Times on 10 February 2022. If you would like to the read the full article please visit The Times website.