Serco wins new jobseekers contract worth £350m April 27, 2021 Serco has this morning announced a £350m contract with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to help find unemployed people new jobs. Shares in the firm rose 3.0 per cent on the back of the announcement. The FTSE 250 services provider will run the West central and Wales contracts for the “Restart” programme, which [...]
Serco tagging trial falls through after SFO declines to offer evidence April 26, 2021 Two former Serco executives have been cleared of defrauding the Ministry of Justice after the SFO declined to offer evidence. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) brought claims against Nicholas Woods and Simon Marshall, who were accused of “defrauding the taxpayer” by concealing £12m in profits related to an electronic tagging contract for offenders. Today a [...]
Buy2Let Cars parent company under investigation by serious fraud watchdog April 9, 2021 The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has launched an investigation this morning into the Buy2Let Cars parent company Raedex Consortium for an unauthorised customer investment scheme. The SFO, the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the City of London police searched two premises in connection to the scheme and arrested one person yesterday. The person was interviewed [...]
Tobacco stocks in the red on UK’s £40m cigarette butt cleaning plan March 30, 2021 Tobacco stocks slipped into the red today after the government unveiled plans to slap manufacturers with the £40m annual cost of cleaning up cigarette butts. In a statement this morning junior environment minister Rebecca Pow said the UK was looking at how tobacco firms could be “held fully accountable for the unsightly scourge of litter [...]
Goldman Sachs junior staff slam bank’s ‘inhumane’ 100-hour working weeks March 18, 2021 Junior bankers at Goldman Sachs claimed they have suffered ‘inhumane’ treatment and workplace abuse, leading to a deterioration in mental health while employed by the US investment bank. A survey circulated on Twitter today that was presented to the bank last month, showed that all of the 13 respondents felt their working hours had negatively [...]
SFO closes investigation into Texan engineering company KBR’s UK subsidiary March 18, 2021 The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has closed its bribery and corruption investigation into KBR’s UK subsidiary after four years. In a statement today the SFO said: “The evidence in this case did not meet the evidential test as defined in the code for crown prosecutors.” KBR, a Texan engineering, procurement and construction company listed on [...]
Wood Group axes final dividend as oil service firm swings to loss March 16, 2021 Engineers Wood Group this morning said it would not pay a final dividend after falling to a £228m loss in 2020. The FTSE 250 firm, which provides services for the oil industry, was battered by the collapse in oil prices last spring. As a result, it swung from a profit of £73m in 2019 to [...]
Fourth executive jailed in Britain’s Iraq oil bribery case March 1, 2021 A former sales manager of Dutch energy services company SBM Offshore was sentenced on Monday to three-and-a-half years in jail after being convicted by a London jury of bribing public officials to win oil contracts in post-occupation Iraq. Paul Bond, 68, was found guilty of two counts of bribery after a retrial at London’s Southwark Crown Court [...]
UK prosecution of Mike Lynch ‘would delay justice’, court hears February 12, 2021 A criminal prosecution of Mike Lynch, the British tech entrepreneur, in the UK would result in severe delays, the US government argued today as it fought to extradite the Autonomy founder to be tried on fraud charges in America. The UK’s Serious Fraud Office has reserved the right to prosecute the case if Lynch is [...]
DAY 1: Tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch fights extradition to the US February 9, 2021 British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch began earlier today his fight against his extradition, slamming the US for “overreaching” and saying the UK authorities could prosecute the alleged fraud. Alex Bailin QC, for Lynch, said the US Department of Justice (DoJ) is “not the global marshall of the corporate world”, as he launched the former Autonomy [...]