The Serious Fraud Office said on 8 May 2026 that it had concluded a two-day International Conference on Economic Crime at Drapers’ Hall in central London, organised with France’s Parquet National Financier and Switzerland’s Office of the Attorney General. More than 100 investigators and prosecutors attended, according to the SFO, giving the event weight beyond a standard diplomatic gathering and marking a visible step in day-to-day prosecutorial contact between the three agencies. (gov.uk) For policy readers, the significance is operational. Cross-border bribery, fraud and asset concealment rarely sit neatly within one legal system, so enforcement often depends on how quickly agencies can share information, sequence investigations and move to preserve evidence or assets held overseas. The London meeting was presented by the SFO as a forum aimed at exactly those problems. (gov.uk)
The conference also served as a progress marker for the International Anti-Corruption Prosecutorial Taskforce formed by the SFO, the PNF and the Swiss OAG in March 2025. The SFO’s earlier announcement described the May 2026 conference as the taskforce’s first event and the first large-scale multi-jurisdictional conference in the agency’s history. (gov.uk) That matters because international enforcement arrangements can remain ad hoc unless they are given a regular structure. A standing taskforce, backed by a recurring conference and direct agency relationships, offers a more durable route for handling parallel investigations, evidence requests and strategy across jurisdictions with different procedures and corporate liability rules. The official announcements did not set out new legal powers, but they did show an effort to make co-operation more routine. (gov.uk)
According to the SFO, Baroness Margaret Hodge, the UK’s Anti-Corruption Champion, opened the conference with remarks on the real-world harm caused by economic crime and the importance of strong international partnerships. That framing aligns with wider government material on economic crime, which describes the threat as damaging to legitimate business, public confidence, national security and the wider economy rather than as a victimless financial offence. (gov.uk) The subject matter of the conference was equally revealing. Over two days, sessions covered case detection, insight sharing, corporate prosecutions, asset recovery and the growing role of cryptocurrency in financial crime; the SFO’s March programme also referred to joint and parallel investigations, international assistance for evidence and asset restraint, and non-conviction-based recovery. Read together, those topics show an enforcement agenda centred not only on prosecution but on tracing money, securing evidence quickly and recovering proceeds across borders. (gov.uk)
Day two opened with an address from Joe Powell MP, who the SFO identified as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax. No new parliamentary measure was announced, but the intervention pointed to continued interest at Westminster in how far agencies are equipped to pursue complex economic crime cases that cross national boundaries. (gov.uk) That interest matters because enforcement debates do not stop at the courtroom. Questions about agency capacity, disclosure burdens, company liability and asset recovery rules all shape whether prosecutors can turn policy ambition into case outcomes. The conference therefore sat at the point where operational practice meets parliamentary scrutiny. (gov.uk)
The wider policy setting is already established in government documents. The Home Office and HM Treasury’s Economic Crime Plan 2023 to 2026 says the public and private sectors must continue to transform the UK response to economic crime, while the Home Office’s Fraud Strategy 2026 to 2029 sets out a more international and co-ordinated model for disruption, victim response and enforcement. Against that backdrop, the London conference reads as part of delivery rather than a standalone event. (gov.uk) The same policy logic runs through government factsheets on the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. Those papers say the Act improves corporate transparency, reforms Companies House powers, supports information-sharing and provides additional powers to seize and recover suspected criminal cryptoassets. International co-operation cannot substitute for those domestic reforms, but it does affect whether those powers work in cases where companies, transactions and assets sit in more than one country. (gov.uk)
For firms, advisers and compliance teams, the immediate message is that prosecutors are investing in earlier and more structured contact across jurisdictions. In practice, that can affect the pace of information requests, the treatment of self-reporting and the extent to which asset-tracing or corporate resolution discussions are understood across more than one authority. The SFO did not publish case outcomes from the event, but its emphasis on practice-sharing suggests a focus on making future co-operation faster and more consistent. (gov.uk) The next test will be whether the taskforce produces visible outputs beyond conferences, such as quicker assistance between agencies, more aligned case strategy or stronger asset recovery. On the official record so far, the clearer conclusion is narrower but still significant: the UK, France and Switzerland are trying to make anti-corruption and economic crime co-operation a regular prosecutorial function rather than an occasional response to high-profile cases. (gov.uk)