Serious Fraud Office publishes July 2026 FOI log, refusing to confirm or deny investigations under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) published its freedom of information (FOI) log for July 2026 on 27 August 2026, covering nine requests made to the agency during the month. Two of the nine requests, references 2026-056 and 2026-058, asked the SFO to say whether it had opened investigations under sections 196 and 199 of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA), a statute that significantly expanded the SFO's powers and reformed the corporate criminal liability framework in England and Wales. In both responses the SFO neither confirmed nor denied holding that information, relying on the criminal investigations exemption in section 30(3) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Other disclosed requests covered topics including the SFO's framework agreements for call-off contracts, interviews conducted under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1987 (the SFO's core compelled interview power), expenditure on external legal counsel, referrals concerning a private company, and referrals relating to local authority housing transactions. The FOI log is a routine transparency publication, and the SFO's answers stop short of confirming any ECCTA casework. Section 196 covers the 'senior manager' attribution route to corporate criminal liability and section 199 creates the failure to prevent fraud offence, so neither section is an information-gathering power. Answering reference 2026-056, the SFO did note that the section 199 offence came into force on 1 September 2025 and that the investigative powers ECCTA affords apply to offences committed on or after that date. The agency's refusal to say whether any such investigations exist will be closely watched by criminal defence, compliance, and corporate crime practices.
Why this matters
ECCTA 2023 represented the most significant overhaul of the UK's corporate criminal liability and economic crime enforcement framework in a generation, introducing, among other measures, a new 'failure to prevent fraud' offence and expanded information-gathering powers for the SFO. The SFO's refusal to confirm or deny whether it holds records of ECCTA investigations leaves the pace of enforcement under the Act publicly unknown, which is itself the position advisers have to plan around. Companies and their advisers monitoring ECCTA implementation cannot read that silence in either direction, and the prudent working assumption is that enforcement risk is live for conduct on or after 1 September 2025, when the failure to prevent fraud offence came into force. The disclosure also confirms continued SFO use of its compelled interview power under the Criminal Justice Act 1987, which remains one of the most commercially disruptive tools in the agency's arsenal.
On the Ground
Corporate crime, regulatory enforcement, and white-collar defence practices are directly activated. Law firms with large corporate clients will be advising on ECCTA compliance programmes, internal investigations triggered by SFO referrals, and the scope of the 'failure to prevent fraud' offence. Where the SFO issues a section 2 compelled interview notice, external legal counsel are engaged immediately to advise the interviewee. Named advisers are not sourced, but the reference to expenditure on external legal counsel in the FOI log confirms the SFO itself engages private counsel. A trainee in a corporate crime or regulatory practice would be assisting with disclosure review and categorisation in the context of an internal investigation, preparing chronologies for counsel, and researching ECCTA statutory provisions to support compliance gap analysis memos.
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“The SFO has refused to confirm or deny whether it is investigating under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. What does that mean in practice for a corporate client, and how should one respond to receiving a section 2 interview notice?”
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