Britain's top fraud fighter

RUNNING Britain's Serious Fraud Office must at times seem like a no-win task. The investigator-cum-prosecutor is subjected to constant jibes for its lack of speed and success, which has earned it the unfortunate nickname of the Serious Farce Office.

In America, those convicted of financial crime, even iconic figures such as lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, are marched off in chains. British financial wrongdoers are more likely to be found luxuriating on a sunny foreign beach.

All of this might appear deeply depressing for Robert Wardle who, as director of the SFO, is the nation's chief commercial crimebuster.

But not a bit of it. Wardle, a compact man with a twinkly smile, is the eternal optimist. He readily accepts the shortcomings of SFO trials and wants to do something about it.

Nor is Wardle shying away from the difficult tasks. He is robustly probing allegations of bribery and corruption concerning arms contracts by Britain's biggest defence contractor and exporter, BAE Systems, despite national security considerations.

'We are looking at the material we have been provided with,' says Wardle. 'It is one of those investigations which is never likely to be simple, but that's why they come to us.'

The SFO director winces when he recalls the outcome of some recent trials, notably the June 2003 acquittal of Leslie Rosenthal in the fraud case brought against do-it-yourself outfit Wickes.

'It was unsatisfactory. Everybody agreed that a fraud had taken place. But no one was convicted for it,' Wardle says.

Wardle, whose agency has a permanent staff of 244 - one-tenth that of the City regulator, the Financial Services Authority - and a budget of £33m, yearns for more successful outcomes to his agency's inquiries.

But he recognises there will have to be huge changes in Britain's clunky and slow-moving judicial system.

He wants to see a radical overhaul, including greater capacity to allow plea bargains, reform of jury trials in serious fraud cases and more access to judges who can agree American-style deals with alleged wrongdoers at an early stage.

WARDLE quotes the recent example of the Versailles trial - where the SFO won guilty verdicts against the disgraced entrepreneur Carl Cushnie and his finance director, Fred Clough - as an example of what can be achieved with better procedure.

Clough agreed to give evidence for the SFO and the prosecution operated with a judge 'who was prepared to manage the trial. I won't say we entirely agreed with his decision because he restricted the evidence we could bring.

'But he was determined that the case was going to be dealt with quickly,' the director says.

His biggest frustration is juries, who, by and large, find it hard to understand the complexity of the evidence presented at fraud trials. But even worse, fraudsters may attempt to nobble juries, making it hard to gain convictions in organised crime trials.

'There is an acceptance that approaching jurors is now common in some types of organised crime.

'It is happening to us sufficiently frequently to give great concern.'

It is possible to give juries police protection but 'that doesn't stop people getting to them by telephone, emails, through their families and their neighbours.'

Wardle alleges that such approaches may have taken place in the failed prosecution of the Monaco-based tycoon Andrew Regan, who had sought to take over the Co-op, but will not go any further. 'I have to be careful here,' he says. The matter is in the hands of the police.

Britain's top fraud prosecutor cuts a different figure from America's top Wall Street crimebuster, the New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer. He also has a very different background.

The American is tall and aquiline with a highly privileged family history and a hustling political ambition.

Wardle is a wiry, neatly-dressed figure in a white shirt and tie who seems to regard his current elevation with wry amusement as something that he never expected to happen.

Born in Weymouth, he was brought up in Peterborough where he attended Stamford School, a direct-grant grammar.

The bustling 52-year-old readily admits he was nothing special there. 'No, good Lord. I certainly wasn't outstanding in any way, either academically or sportingly.'

From this unprepossessing start, Wardle went on to take a law degree at the University of Hull before returning to Peterborough to become an articled clerk at the firm of Greenwoods. This was where he gained his first experience of the court system, doing legal aid work before magistrates and at the Crown Court.

Wardle liked the combat of the courtroom. He became an assistant prosecuting solicitor in Essex and then a full-blooded prosecuting solicitor in Cambridge.

It was there that he acquired an interest in the paper trail of white collar crime.

SOON he would become part of the recently-structured Crown Prosecution Service. In 1988 he applied to join the fledgling SFO and was surprised to find himself in a job.

An unmarried man, Wardle still lives in his native Peterborough.

He likes nothing better than enjoying lunch and drinking fine wines at a fashionable hostelry close to the SFO's modest headquarters at Gray's Inn, where he engages in old-fashioned flirting with the waitresses.

At weekends he goes shooting and hiking in the countryside near his home.

Wardle, who spends up to 12 hours a day in his bright corner office with a distant view of St Paul's, hopes that his ideas for reforming juries are not falling on deaf ears.

'I think that cases are so large and so complicated that they cannot realistically be dealt with by a traditional jury. The whole picture and the whole case is being artificially restricted.

'The Maxwell case (brought against the late Robert Maxwell's son Kevin), for example, was compounded by the fact that only one trial was allowed. The further trials were stayed as abuse of process.

'Further work needs to be done on the practicality of a judge sitting with assessors or lay members,' Wardle says.

'But our view is that a judge sitting with some lay element, whether it be people with qualifications or experience in banking, accounting or financial services, is well worth looking at.'

Among the cases still on the SFO's list of unfinished business is that of Asil Nadir, who founded the trading company Polly Peck, which went bankrupt.

Nadir has been a fugitive from justice in Northern Cyprus for the last 11 years. The SFO is reluctant to play footsie with Nadir, who says he will return to Britain providing he can be freed on bail.

'I think we would be very slow to give up on someone who has deliberately absented themselves. This was a very serious case with theft of £150m alleged in the indictment.'

Showing a touch of steel, he adds: 'I think the public interest requires that such cases are tried.'

Wardle is not afraid to deal with sensitive cases either, such as the slush fund allegations made against BAE.

'Bribery of people overseas is now confirmed as an offence.

'Jurisdiction was extended in 2001 by the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act,' he says, adding: 'Now it is criminal.'

The problem is gaining access to people from overseas.

Despite the difficulties, Wardle shows no more sign of giving up on this than he does on Nadir.

'The fact that this is an arms contract doesn't make any difference to the way we approach it,' he asserts.

So far his officers have not visited BAE, which has strenuously denied any wrongdoing.

But Wardle is unrelenting, saying: 'I hope they will be co-operative.'

He may not look and act like Spitzer but Wardle, despite the SFO's flawed past, seems to have the same steely determination that makes a good prosecutor.

Interview by the Daily Mail City Editor, Alex Brummer