Labour killing skills to investigate white-collar crime

National’s Justice spokesman, Simon Power, is more convinced than ever that the Serious Fraud Office’s skills in investigating white-collar crime will be lost when it is merged into the Organised and Financial Crime Agency.

“Former SFO boss David Bradshaw remains adamant that the merger is the wrong move, and he’s not alone.

“Mr Bradshaw says dropping the SFO’s special powers to order suspects to produce documents and answer questions would delay investigations for years and would see cases dropped without the facts coming out.

“He says he has not come across anyone who supports the merger, and that all the feedback he has received, including from defence lawyers, is that it’s not a good idea

“And newspapers up and down the country have editorialised on the foolishness of doing away with an organisation that has such specialist skills.

“It’s clear the SFO was stitched-up by the Government.

“We should not be allowing the SFO to be scrapped when it’s in the middle of investigating the failure of three finance companies in which investors have lost hundreds of millions of dollars.”

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