Stephen Parkinson will be the new Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service the Attorney General has announced today.

Rt Hon Victoria Prentis KC MP selected Mr Parkinson following an open and transparent competition. It is expected that he will take up the appointment from 1 November for an initial term of five years. He will succeed the outgoing DPP, Max Hill KC.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-director-of-public-prosecutions-announced

The appointment of Nick Ephgrave as the new director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) could be viewed as the beginning of a new era for the agency. If he introduces changes, they will have implications for the SFO – and for the corporate world the SFO has the task of policing.

At this stage, it is far too early to say with any certainty exactly what changes the new director may introduce, but what we can say is that there are many issues that he will need to get a firm grip of if his tenure is to be a successful one. Mr Ephgrave is coming to an agency that has been criticised for a wide range of shortcomings. Any chances of him having a successful tenure as head of the SFO will depend on him addressing these shortcomings – and putting them right.

A former company director has been found guilty for his role in a property scheme in which he sought fraudulently to sell a community centre without the knowledge of the owners.

Mohammed Shafiq, 53, of Nottingham was convicted on 8 September 2023 at Nottingham Crown Court of fraud by false representation and sentenced to five-and-a-half years imprisonment.

https://westbridgfordwire.com/former-nottingham-director-guilty-of-multi-million-pound-property-fraud/

Pension scams have cost members more than £26.4mn in recent years, data has revealed.

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the City of London Police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau by the Pensions Management Institute revealed that between 2020 and 2022, there were 1,595 reported pension scams in England and Wales.

https://www.ftadviser.com/pensions/2023/09/11/pension-scams-cost-victims-more-than-26mn/

Scots are being warned of a significant rise in scams linked to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

As prices and household bills continue to soar, crooks are adapting their tactics to con people out of cash, new figures show.

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/how-to-avoid-scammers-exploiting-cost-of-living-crisis/

The Government is “flying blind” on its exposure to fraud, which has quadrupled since the start of the Covid pandemic, MPs have said.

The cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also said that while most of the £21 billion of taxpayers’ money lost to fraud during the pandemic is unlikely to be recovered, the Government should be doing more to recoup what it can.

https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2023/09/08/government-accused-of-flying-blind-on-soaring-levels-of-fraud/

MPs have criticised the government for “dragging its feet” over the Economic Crime Bill, after a string of measures aiming to toughen up dirty money protections were voted against or watered down.

Peers had passed a series of amendments to the legislation aimed at fighting back against economic crime, fraud and illicit wealth prior to Parliament’s summer recess.

https://www.cityam.com/mps-criticise-government-for-dragging-feet-over-economic-crime-bill/

Mortgage-related fraud has increased by 32.8 per cent over the past year, research from Apex Bridging has revealed.

The research found this rise represented the second-highest increase of all banking and credit industry fraud.

The Department for Business and Trade has been told to get detailed figures for the cost of recovering more than £960m in Covid support packages for small business that is still outstanding after being wrongly paid out in the early months of the pandemic.

https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/dbt-told-to-detail-cost-of-recovering-covid-loan-fraud-losses

Mining companies must remain vigilant to corruption risks despite recent announcements by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO), an expert in managing bribery and corruption risk has said.

https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/corruption-risks-in-mining-remain-despite-uk-probes-dropped