For example, in some cases regulators have powers to ensure that the miscreants are removed from the market, fined and made to disgorge their ill-gotten gains. The judgment on whether the case should be dealt with by regulation or criminal action is sometimes a fine one and it is important to ensure that the resources for investigating crime are focused on the right cases. This, you will readily understand, limits the number of cases that the SFO is able to take on indeed, although we have the highest case load at the moment that the Office has had in its twelve year history, it is scratching the surface of the total amount of substantial financial crime that is committed which could be prosecuted in the courts of England and Wales. Where the case is a criminal one and, if proved, should be brought to trial in a criminal court, we must ensure that the resources needed to tackle it are at the right level and there are enough of them. To that end, Ministers have agreed that a working group be set up to see if there can be a more co-ordinated and energetic way of resourcing fraud cases better.
Nobody pretends that the present level of resourcing is adequate.
More difficult is how to make more of the right resources available. One obvious first step is to make fraud a national police priority. Next, to establish a national police resource for the investigation of serious fraud. At present we work with whichever police force covers the area where the fraud takes place. Fraud is a national problem - increasingly an international problem.