On 5 February 2021, the U.K. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) does not have the power to compel a foreign company that has no registered office or fixed place of business in the U.K. to produce documents held outside the U.K. under section 2(3) Criminal Justice Act 1987 (CJA). This means that where the parent of a U.K. company is a foreign company which has no presence in the U.K., the SFO will not be able to require it to produce documents held outside the U.K. even if those documents are sought in connection with an investigation relating to its U.K. subsidiary. The decision may act as a brake on the SFO’s powers of investigation at a time when fraud is increasingly cross-border and the alternative routes for gathering evidence are slower and more cumbersome.
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