The trial of two former executives at Serco has collapsed after the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) failed to disclose evidence to the defendants, in a major blow to the UKâs anti-corruption agency.
A judge at Southwark crown court on Monday instructed jurors to return a verdict of not guilty for Nicholas Woods and Simon Marshall, two former directors of the Serco subsidiary Serco Geografix Ltd, after the SFO offered no evidence following its identification of its error.
The executives had been charged with using fraud and false accounting to artificially reduce Sercoâs profit margins on a contract for the electronic monitoring of offenders on behalf of the Ministry of Justice.