Hello, I'm Ben O'Neill, the news editor in Emlex's London Bureau. If you've tuned in to

Mlex's podcasts before, thanks for joining us again. And if this is your first time, a very warm welcome.

Today I'm joined by Martin Coyle and Ben Lucas, who both report from London for Emlex's

anti-bribery and corruption service. Martin, hello. Hi, Ben.

And Ben, hello to you too.

Hi.

Now, you two spend much of your time working through and reporting on the complex trails

of fraud and kickbacks, overseas briberies that some companies leave behind them.

But today, we're going to talk about what happens when the law enforcers themselves are the

story. And that's very much the case in the UK right now, where the country's principal corruption

prosecutor, the serious fraud office or SFO, has spent months wondering if it actually has a future.

It seems a very long way from January when the SFO was fated after concluding a deferred prosecution agreement

with Rolls-Royce for almost half a billion pounds over worldwide corrupt practices that spanned three decades.

But then in May, Prime Minister Theresa May pledged in her election manifesto to merge the SFO with the larger national crime agency.

So, Martin, Ben, what's the latest with the SFO?

I mean, we're now in August, and this hasn't happened, and there's no merger,

and the SFO has just opened up several large new investigations into big companies.

So can you bring us up to date, Martin?

Yes, thanks, Ben. As you say, Theresa May, in her previous role as Home Secretary has twice

before tried to roll the agency under the wing of the SFO, but she's failed. Now, this third

attempt, as Prime Minister, looks like it could also fail due to the Conservative Party's slim majority

in Parliament. But so far we've had no formal announcement from the government on this.

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