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The director of the UK’s Serious Fraud Office is stepping down halfway through his tenure, citing personal reasons for his decision to leave early.
Nick Ephgrave, 59, said on Thursday that he has decided to retire and will leave the role at the end of March, with an interim replacement expected to take the job while a new director is found.
A visibly emotional Ephgrave, whose five-year tenure was due to end in 2028, told reporters at the SFO’s office in London that he had achieved what he had set out to at the fraud prosecutor and that he had decided last autumn that the “time is right to hang up the handcuffs”.
Ephgrave, a former senior police officer, became the first person who was not a lawyer to run the SFO when he took up the role in September 2023. Since then, he has announced the opening of 12 investigations into companies including French defence electronics outfit Thales and the former London-listed social housing company Home REIT.
The office has also brought charges against former executives of mining company Glencore during his tenure, in one of the SFO’s more high-profile cases. The agency currently has a caseload of about 35 open investigations.
“There have been many considerations to weigh up, but after a lot of thinking and reflecting I am certain that after 38 years of public service the time is right to hang up the handcuffs,” Ephgrave said in a letter to staff on Thursday.
He added: “My working life has been immensely rewarding over the years but also demanding, both for me and my family, and I am looking forward to being able to finally pursue the interests and plans we have made together but have never been able to commit to before now.”
The former Metropolitan Police officer has worked on a number of high-profile UK cases throughout his career, including the murder of schoolboy Damilola Taylor in Peckham, south London.
Ephgrave was heavily involved in the 2006 retrial and subsequent convictions of Taylor’s killers, while he himself had four young daughters at home.
He told the FT in February 2024 that he still spoke to Taylor’s father, who died a few weeks after the interview.
Ephgrave faced an uphill battle running the SFO, which for years has been dogged by case failures and repeated government threats to its existence.
Under his leadership he has had to confront problems with the prosecutor’s evidence disclosure systems, which posed a threat to historic cases.
Former Libor trader Tom Hayes, one of the agency’s most high-profile convictions, also had his case overturned on Ephgrave’s watch.
The director’s campaign for the UK to pay corporate whistleblowers to improve intelligence has been a key plank of his tenure, with some early signs of success.
“It is undoubtedly going to be hard to give up what I have done for so long and also a little scary to leave the security and structure of an institutional life, but a new and exciting adventure awaits and I feel ready to start it now,” said Ephgrave.