Insights

A recent report created by Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud and cyber crime reporting centre, revealed that in 2017 holiday fraud in the UK amounted to £6.7 million, with 4,700 holidaymakers affected. The average amount lost per person, at above £1,500, represents a 25% rise from the previous year. Further, Action Fraud’s report revealed that victims of holiday booking fraud claimed the impact of the crime had gone beyond just financial, with some saying it had also affected their health.

The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) is the body responsible for protecting the EU’s financial interests. It has two main focuses: to investigate fraud involving EU expenditure, and to investigate corruption involving the staff of EU institutions. Its jurisdiction spans the entirety of the EU and it closely collaborates with EU institutions and the national authorities and law enforcement agencies of each member state to fight cross-border fraud.

At the beginning of this year, the BBC discovered that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had dropped over 900 rape and sexual offences cases in 2016-17 (almost double the figure in 2014-15) because of failures in the disclosure process. The revelation followed the publication of two reports in 2017 (the HMCPSI and HMIC joint inspectorate report on disclosure of unused material, and the Mouncher investigation report) that were scathing of how the police and CPS share information with the defence and handle disclosure.

In the recent case R v James [2018] EWCA Crim 285, three applications for leave to appeal were joined together because they all shared a similar feature that had nothing to do with fresh evidence or the nature of the crimes the applicants were convicted of – all the lawyers were ‘fresh lawyers’, in the sense that they hadn’t represented the accused at trial or in relation to an initial application to appeal, and were looking to renew these refused applications by lodging new grounds.

The media can often have an uneasy relationship with the law, particularly given that a number of publications will employ unusual tactics in order to remain ‘ahead of the game’ in what is known to be an incredibly competitive industry. The recent case of Anthony Jonathan France v R is a prime example of this, where a criminal journalist succeeded in appealing his conviction for his part in making payments to a public official in exchange for news stories.