FCA chief: Court delays denying victims justice
Delays in the UK court system are denying victims of financial crime justice and preventing better regulation of the finance industry, the boss of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has said.
Nikhil Rathi told City PM that his organisation was working “really hard to accelerate [its] investigations” but that the slow pace of high-profile court battles and the often years-long waits for trial dates for criminal cases were impeding those efforts.
“We obviously respect the courts and their processes… but I do think that justice deferred is sometimes justice denied, and I think that the question [of delays around securing court dates] is important,” he said.
Rathi’s FCA has faced persistent criticism for not being able to deliver convictions on several long-running prosecutions on some of the most notorious names in British finance.
Its cases against disgraced fund manager Neil Woodford and former Barclays boss Jess Staley both date back to 2019, with some City figures and parliamentarians blaming the watchdog for the absence of any conclusion.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on investment fraud accused the FCA of “leaving more than 500,000 people in the dark” because it had taken so long to complete its investigation into Woodford. The former investment manager’s eponymous fund was shuttered by regulators in 2019 after it ignominiously collapsed due to liquidity issues.
Staley is accused of misleading the FCA over his links to the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. And the FCA has conceded its probe into the banker was delayed by months because the then Barclays chair had reassured the watchdog’s former head of supervision there was no impropriety in the pair’s relationship.
‘You can’t take shortcuts’
But both prosecutions have been delayed further because Woodford and Staley have opted to appeal their charges, with Staley having taken his case to the Upper Tribunal in March.
Asked why it has taken so long for a verdict on those cases to be reached, and whether a lack of closure was frustrating for a regulator that prides itself on “moving incredibly fast”, Rathi said: “Some investigations do take time and you can’t take shortcuts. Sometimes we need millions of pieces of digital evidence or we’re dealing with issues cross-border.”
Rathi highlighted the charges it brought against nine so-called finfluencers last year, telling City PM that it was not able to get a criminal trial date for the case until 2027.
The FCA chief also addressed the delays at an evidence session with the Treasury Committee on Tuesday, when he told MPs: “It is taking two to three years to get a criminal court trial date. That is a challenge, because that consumes our resources, because we have to keep those cases going for a number of years, and the case teams change, but we have to make sure that the case remains fresh.”
A verdict on the Jes Staley case is not expected until September, while the FCA has warned its action against Woodford will not be resolved before 2026 or later.