The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has welcomed amendments to its legislation which will ensure it can effectively investigate and prosecute fraud and corruption in an increasingly complex, digital environment.
The changes to the SFO Act, which passed its third reading yesterday, update the search warrant framework and legal test for evidence admissibility in line with the Search and Surveillance Act 2012 and the Evidence Act 2006.
“When the Act came into effect 36 years ago, work was largely paper based, with evidence held in ledgers in offices. Today, almost all financial information is held digitally and increasingly in the cloud,” says SFO Director, Karen Chang.
“Rapidly advancing technology has seen fraud grow in both volume and sophistication, with offenders using AI, cryptocurrency and encryption to hide their crimes – and this trajectory is expected to continue.
“The amendments to the Act will help the SFO continue to keep pace with the changing nature of fraud and corruption.”
The updates to the Act’s search warrant framework include enabling the SFO to:
- obtain digital evidence from devices and cloud services;
- apply for search warrants orally to an issuing officer (a judge or other judicial officer);
- exclude people from a search warrant site.
The SFO Act’s legal test for evidence admissibility has been aligned with the approach taken in the Evidence Act 2006, to enable the courts to consider more factors when determining the admissibility of evidence.
“In the past year we’ve had 17 matters before the courts involving 36 defendants, with a combined total of $203 million of alleged fraud,” says Ms Chang.
“We remain focused on catching offenders who bribe foreign public officials, misuse public funds, target a particular community, commit corporate or commercial fraud that risks New Zealand’s significant trade industries, and public officials whose corruption carries a risk to health and safety.
“Our purpose is to protect New Zealand’s economic and financial wellbeing – and updates to the SFO Act gives us the tools to continue this work.”
