Welcome back to the podcast, bribe, swindle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi, and today I'm speaking with Lisa Osowski, director of the UK's serious fraud office. We've asked Lisa to share some insight into the first two months of her tenure and her priorities and vision

for the serious fraud office. Lisa is an American and British attorney. Prior to assuming her

role as director of the UK's SFO on September 3rd, 2018, she worked in a number of different

private sector capacities. Prior to that, she served as Deputy General Counsel for the FBI

in Washington.

Lisa, thank you for joining me.

Thank you.

Let's start with your interesting background. You attended Harvard Law School and were in law enforcement role previously at the FBI in Washington.

While you're clearly very qualified for this role, were you surprised that the British government was willing to leap the

transatlantic cultural divide in this case? You know, I think of myself, you introduced me as an

American Brit. I think of myself as a British American. Been here 20 years. I've qualified to practice

at the Bar of England and Wales. I've been in this country for an awfully long time.

So I wasn't that surprised when I actually got a call that said,

you know, we're looking for someone to head the office,

and your name keeps coming up.

Are you interested?

I was happily in the private sector at the time,

but thought, you know what?

What a fabulous coming around for me,

because 25 years ago, long before he began investigating all things Russia, Bob Mueller

sent me here to work on a big bank failure, the BCCI bank failure. And I don't know if that

rings bells to, there are many people running around

...