The SFO’s Chief Investigator Mick Gallagher will be delivering an overview of the SFO’s work and current priorities, followed by fraud case study covering the SFO’s Global Forestry Investments (GFI) case.

The Serious Fraud Office’s successful prosecution of GFI secured the convictions of the two company directors behind fraudulent green investment schemes in Brazil, which took in approximately £37 million of investments. This case was conducted with assistance from partner agencies across the globe, and revealed that Andrew Nathaniel Skeene and Junie Conrad Omari Bowers had deceived around 2,000 investors. This presentation provides;

• A compelling high-level summary of the SFO’s investigation and the resulting successful prosecution of a complex and challenging fraud case perpetrated by two sophisticated criminals.
• Outlines some of the processes used by SFO investigators and the specialist role of the SFO in the UK’s economic crime landscape.
• Helps give an overview of the type of complex fraud cases the SFO handles and the importance of cross-agency cooperation an engagement with other jurisdictions is in such cases.

Successfully countering fraud is a highly connected and creative exercise. However, the complex governance processes that fraud investigators have to navigate can inhibit timely data sharing and seriously hinder collaboration.

Operational systems are often inflexible or operate as black boxes, making it hard to build in new counter-fraud measures as perpetrators change behaviour. Front-line case workers (often the first to spot new tactics) struggle to contribute their insights to shared risk registers and risk management software infrastructure in a timely fashion.

By leveraging and scaling up capabilities that already exist across government, we believe improvements can be delivered quickly and cost-effectively, with minimal disruption.

The rollout of economic support during COVID-19, the war on Ukraine and the energy crisis has created a painful tradeoff between robust counter-fraud controls and ensuring a speedy delivery. How can organisations best prepare against future threats in an ever-changing risk landscape?

• Tackling organised crime groups seeking to exploit support during the pandemic
• Shutting down systematic attacks on the benefit system and preventing benefits from being paid to people trying to scam the system

• Investing in technology and practices needed by the horizon-scanning and intelligence teams to promote their work
• Partnering with government counter fraud counterparts to share expertise in prevention, fraud risk and enforcement
• Focusing on intelligence, prevention and enabling fields to help achieve key outcomes
• Tapping into the power of communication as a fraud fighting tool and embracing social media and other channels and platforms

• Enabling the secure sharing of high quality, trusted data to fight fraud
• Using databases as comprehensive and diverse sources of fraud risk data in the UK
• Strengthening the response against fraud by providing research and dynamic intelligence
• Supporting the call for Government to move to a strategy for combatting fraud which is outcome and not process based

A presentation of the results of a recently completed item of market research based upon event driven, or perpetual KYC. Hugo will outline:

• A clear definition of pKYC for the industry
• Attitudes and perceptions of KYC
• Challenges around practice and adoption of pKYC
• Best advice on unlocking the benefits of pKYC

• Data is the source material for identifying fraudulent behaviour
• So many data sources and formats are available and growing exponentially – how to navigate them
• New data governance software technology is essential for counter fraud analysis – turning raw data into insight, identifying anomalies that pinpoint fraud and risk of fraud
• Examples of successful case studies using new technology

As the public sector fraud challenge continues to grow we’re asking what could “different” do to help strengthen government’s counter fraud environment? Using examples from across the NAO’s back catalogue of value for money, insight and financial audit work, we’ll be looking at the benefits doing things differently can bring and what this might mean for the future of public sector counter fraud.

In the challenges of detecting, preventing, and safeguarding organisations and individuals from financial crime, what tools, processes, and technologies can be leveraged to achieve the best outcomes?