“The nerdiest detective novel ever”: how Hickman & Rose exposed the SFO’s e-disclosure disaster

Global Investigations Review has published a video of its interview with business crime partner Christopher Houssemayne du Boulay in which Christopher explains, in detail, the process by which he uncovered terminal problems in the SFO’s Autonomy e-disclosure system.

Described by GIR deputy editor Sam Fry as “like the nerdiest detective novel ever”, Christopher’s account starts with him spotting strange anomalies in the disclosure data he received from the SFO; and ends with the agency dropping two criminal prosecutions, and conducting a wholesale review of past cases.

“As we pushed more and more, it became even more shocking,” Christopher says in the interview conducted by Sam Fry at the GIR Live event in London last month.

“It turned out that this wasn’t some inherent flaw of the Autonomy system,” Christopher goes on to say.  “When the SFO had acquired it in 2009 they had deliberately set it up in such a way as to cause this to happen”.

GIR’s recording of the interview is available here. A transcript of the interview is available to GIR subscribers here. Christopher has written about this case further here.