Welcome back to the podcast, Brib, Swindle, or Steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi. Today we are listening in to the presentation of Michelle DeClova at the Trace Forum in London, the state of anti-corruption enforcement in the UK and the future of the SFO.

Michelle is a partner with Adelschall Goddard and the trace partner firm in the UK.

Here's Michelle.

It's lovely to be here.

I'm going to spend the next 40 minutes or so just talking you through events of the last year effectively and the state of anti-corruption

enforcement in the UK and the future of the SFO. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to begin

by looking at some key bribery and corruption cases. Then we're going to talk a bit about

the potential policy or enforcement

pivots. And there are a couple of changes on the agenda that I think might prove to be quite

significant, and one of which at least I think is very significant from a compliance perspective.

And it would be great during the course

of the day to get people's reflections on whether they're already thinking about how to respond

to those changes. Brief update on international cooperation. I think this is headed the state

of anti-corruption enforcement. In two words, I think it's not great, would be my summing up.

What we have seen in the last year is that the SFO remains the primary agency

for investigating complex fraud and corruption, but there are other agencies who are

getting involved. And in the last sort of decade or so, the landscape has really been dominated

by the SFO's use of deferred prosecution agreements.

So you'll probably remember that this was a mechanism

for resolving criminal investigations,

very well established in the US,

that the UK imported into this jurisdiction in 2014.

...