Christopher Houssemayne du Boulay addresses SFO disclosure problems in Law Society Gazette

Business Crime partner Christopher Houssemayne du Boulay has written an article for the Law Society Gazette addressing the role played by the SFO’s Autonomy e-disclosure system in two of the agency’s recently failed SFO prosecutions

Christopher’s article, entitled “The SFO still hasn’t learnt its lesson on disclosure” analyses the recent G4S and London Mining prosecutions, both of which cases ended with the SFO offering no evidence.

One important reason for this, Christopher writes, was the agency’s inability to get to grips with technical and procedural issues connected to the Autonomy e-discovery system it used at the time to manage disclosure.

The agency has conducted one – and is now conducting a second – review of past cases. It has also now switched to a new e-discovery system.

But, as Christopher writes: “Claiming these problems are solved now that Autonomy has been replaced is like losing files down the back of a filing cabinet and then saying that everything is fine because you have bought new cabinets. The software was never the problem.”

Chris’s full opinion piece is in the Law Society Gazette