London boss of foreign bank arrested over bribery investigation
The head of an international bank’s UK arm has been arrested on suspicion of bribery, it emerged this afternoon.
In comments made to a conference in Cambridge, the deputy director of the National Crime Agency (NCA)’s economic crime unit said that two senior individuals from a foreign bank’s London unit have been detained following a seven-month corruption investigation.
While the pair remain unnamed amid the ongoing prosecution case, NCA official Nigel Kirby told an audience that the case involves both the boss and the customer relations manager of the bank’s UK branch.
A spokesperson for the NCA told City PM that bribery investigations take seven years on average, and with the NCA heading towards its fifth year in operation, this latest case is an example of the agency’s growing activity to target corrupt individuals within London’s financial sector.
The comments, which were picked up by Bloomberg during a speech to a room full of lawyers, came on the same day as Lisa Osofsky pledged that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) would remain independent from the NCA in her first speech as director.
Suspicions that the SFO and the NCA would merge have lingered following Theresa May’s manifesto commitment last year to combine both organisations as part of cost-cutting measures, although the government has yet to signal any firm movement towards fulfilling the pledge.
However, Osofsky’s firm statement yesterday morning made clear that the SFO has no intention of becoming one with the NCA.
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Jonathan Pickworth, partner at global law firm White & Case, said: "Lisa clearly intends to make her mark. She reaffirmed the commitments she has received about the future of the SFO, and this enables her to play the long game, focussing on the biggest and most complex cases – the ones that the SFO was set up to do."
Pickworth added: "It should also help to relieve any nagging doubts about the future of the SFO, and allow her to build on the work David Green has done in saving the agency in its current form."