Britain’s Serious Fraud Office names COO as interim head

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has named its chief operating officer, Mark Thompson, as its interim director, pending the appointment of a permanent successor to outgoing head David Green.

The SFO, which prosecutes cases of high-level fraud and corruption in British business, said on Tuesday it had identified a candidate to take on the permanent role and will announce that person “when it is possible to do so”.

The SFO has come under political pressure in recent years, with Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party proposing ahead of last year’s election that the SFO be folded into the National Crime Agency.

The SFO appeared to win a reprieve when the pledge was removed from a two-year plan the government issued after the election.

In 2017, the SFO reached settlements with Rolls-Royce (L:) and Tesco (L:) to end investigations into, respectively, bribery allegations and an accounting scandal.

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