The Serious Fraud Office has secured a court-approved Deferred Prosecution Agreement with Ultra Electronics Holdings Ltd, requiring the British defence and aerospace electronics supplier to pay a £10 million financial penalty and £4.8 million towards the SFO's investigation costs. The outcome follows the company's acceptance of responsibility for failing to prevent bribery. For Policy Wire readers, the significance lies not only in the amount recovered but in the enforcement route used. A DPA allows prosecution to be deferred rather than dropped, with the company remaining subject to legally binding conditions and judicial scrutiny.
According to the SFO, Ultra Electronics must pay both the penalty and the investigation costs within 30 days. The agreement also requires the company to provide annual reports to the SFO for the next three years, setting out whether its anti-bribery and compliance programme is working in practice. That continuing duty is a central feature of the case. The court-approved settlement requires evidence of sustained reform, meaning the company must show that changes to controls, oversight and internal reporting are durable rather than limited to the point of settlement.
The investigation began in 2018 after Ultra Electronics reported suspected corruption linked to conduct in Algeria. The SFO said the inquiry was widened in 2024 to cover all jurisdictions in which the company operated, giving investigators a broader basis for examining how the business managed third-party risk in overseas markets. The conduct covered by the DPA concerns three public sector contracts pursued through agents. That detail is important because agency relationships remain one of the most common areas of exposure in Bribery Act cases, particularly where intermediaries are used to secure business with public bodies.
One of the contracts was with the Omani Ministry of Transport and Communications and was worth up to £200 million. Two further opportunities were in Algeria: one for information technology and e-commerce systems at Houari Boumediene Airport in Algiers, and another for encryption technology for the Algerian Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. The Algerian contracts were not ultimately secured, but the SFO said they were expected to generate around £1.4 million in profit. The case therefore shows that criminal exposure can arise even where the business sought is not won, if the route taken to pursue that business involved bribery risk that was not properly prevented.
Under the Bribery Act 2010, a company can be held criminally liable where a person acting on its behalf pays a bribe to obtain or retain business, unless the company can show that it had adequate procedures in place to prevent that conduct. The Ultra Electronics case is a clear example of the failure to prevent bribery offence being used against a corporate organisation. The DPA mechanism is also worth close attention. It is a voluntary agreement between a prosecutor and an organisation, but it only takes effect once approved by a judge. In return for prosecution being deferred, the company must accept conditions such as financial penalties, cooperation and compliance improvement, with the risk of prosecution returning if those terms are not met.
The SFO's own account also gives the case a governance and remediation dimension. The agency said it had previously withdrawn from negotiations with Ultra Electronics because the conditions for a meaningful agreement were not in place. Talks resumed only after significant changes to the company's ownership, structure and leadership. That sequence will be read closely by boards, acquirers and compliance teams. It indicates that prosecutors will examine whether a business has credible leadership change, sufficient authority for compliance functions and a genuine capacity to engage with investigators before agreeing to resolve a case through a negotiated court process.
Ultra Electronics was removed from the FTSE 250 on 1 August 2022 when it was taken private by Advent, and the SFO said the company now operates under new leadership. The agency has also stated that this agreement concludes its criminal investigation into Ultra Electronics. In the SFO's statement, Director Graham McNulty said bribery damages trust in the lawful conduct of business on which public services and critical national infrastructure depend. For companies supplying government, defence and infrastructure markets, the practical point is direct: self-reporting and reform may affect the form of resolution, but they do not remove the need for payment, monitoring and evidence that anti-bribery controls are effective.