By Jonathan Fisher QC. Edited by Ted Sumpster.

The present arrangements for fighting serious fraud, corruption and financial market crimes are lamentably deficient. The haphazard development of the Government agencies tasked with tackling these crimes has created a system of overlapping responsibilities for investigation and prosecution, a dispersion of powers and caused unnecessary duplication of manpower and specialist resources. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, our criminal justice system struggles to cope with complex fraud trials and if the perpetrators of these crimes are to be brought to account, important changes to the criminal law need to be made.