A new and important development within our organisation is our intelligence function. Intelligence is any piece of relevant information which could be useful in our fight against serious fraud and corruption.
By gathering and developing intelligence, we can take a proactive stance against fraud.
Intelligence generally begins life as raw information provided by members of the public, commercial institutions and public bodies. Once received, the information is recorded, analysed, developed and evaluated before ultimately being used by the organisation in any one of a number of different ways.
The intelligence development process may involve comparing the raw information with other material that we already hold or applying different analytical tools and techniques. Often we will use additional information collected from a variety of sources in order to fully develop a particular piece of intelligence.
In common with the police and our partner agencies across the law enforcement community, the SFO is an intelligence-led organisation.
What does this mean?
This means that we make full use of all relevant information to inform our decision making at every level in our fight against serious and complex fraud, and corruption. .
Within the SFO, intelligence may be used in support of an on-going investigation or to better inform decisions we make about future investigations. It may also be used by the Director of the SFO as the basis for commencing a criminal investigation.
We work with other intelligence-led organisations to share information and we are also a member of the Financial Crime Information Network (FIN-NET). This network brings together all the relevant organisations to encourage information sharing on criminal activity which impacts on the UK's financial system.
