Britain’s White-Collar Cops Are Getting Too Good at Their Job
Green has transformed his agency into something “not to be trifled with,” in the words of one admirer.
Photographer: Sophie Green for Bloomberg Businessweek
Britain’s top white-collar crime enforcer left his London office one damp evening late last year, hailed a black cab to Canary Wharf, and took a seat in the front row of a wood-paneled auditorium. David Green, the director of the Serious Fraud Office, had come to hear former Prime Minister David Cameron give a speech on corruption and the spread of dirty money. Early in the Q&A portion, Green signaled for a microphone and asked a deceptively straightforward question: What did Cameron think of the anticorruption work of the SFO—an agency set up precisely to investigate and prosecute high-level corporate crime?
Cameron, a genteel Etonian with more than his share of the erudition required for high office in the U.K., was somehow tongue-tied. “The SFO, yes, I do support its work,” he stammered, pausing for several seconds. But there seemed to be a but, and Cameron began to hedge. “As prime minister, you do feel a responsibility for wanting British business to get out there and win orders and succeed,” he said, adding, “so sometimes there are frustrations and worries and concerns.”