Serious Fraud Office hires new CTO from The Bar Council

The Serious Fraud Office has appointed Ben Denison as its chief technology officer.

Denison joins the SFO, an independent UK government department that investigates and prosecutes serious or complex fraud and corruption, from The Bar Council, where he has been CIO since January 2010.

In its last financial year to March 31, 2014, the SFO spent £2.27 million on IT from a total expenditure of £52 million.

Employing over 300 people of which more than 80% are case workers investigating the most serious kinds of economic crime, the SFO had been operating with an interim CTO, Matthew Mallett, who was in the temporary role since December last year.

The SFO is currently investigating a number of high profile cases, including the manipulation of LIBOR rates and the billing practices of outsourcing giants G4S and Serco on an electronic tagging contract with the Ministry of Justice, which was overcharged millions of pounds.

In 2012 the SFO suffered a data loss, with 98% of the material eventually recovered, and in the same year a High Court judge slammed the agency over it’s handling of a case that left it unable to track the information it had used to obtain a search warrant, which led to the SFO being sued for £300 million. The agency recently settled the case with brothers Vincent Tchenguiz and Robert Tchenguiz for £3 million plus costs and £1.5 million plus costs respectively.

Denison previously worked as head of IT at recruitment firms Rockpools and Veredus Executive Resourcing.