Case Explained: White-collar crime: Victim compensation and the limits of POCA – Legal Perspective

On 8 January, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) announced that it will return £400,000 to victims of a fraud committed more than two decades ago. The recovery, achieved through civil proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA), has been described by SFO director Nick Ephgrave as ‘groundbreaking’, marking the first time the agency has intercepted recovered funds before they passed to the Treasury and instead redirected them to victims. 

At first glance, the case appears to signal a significant shift in how the SFO may approach compensation in long-running or otherwise intractable fraud cases. However, on closer examination, the decision is better understood as a pragmatic and highly specific use of existing legal tools, rather than a new model for civil recovery or a lowering of enforcement thresholds.

This landmark case concerned funds stolen in 2002 by Abdallah Ali Jammal, who orchestrated an advance fee fraud through unsolicited emails promising large commissions for assistance in releasing overseas funds. The scam defrauded at least 18 victims of about £4.4m, with Jammal fleeing the UK before he could be charged. 

During its investigation, the SFO froze several accounts linked to Jammal, including around £150,000 held at Jammal Trust Bank in Lebanon. That bank was later liquidated after being sanctioned by the US in 2019 for alleged links to Hezbollah. Following years of international cooperation with agencies including the FBI and Australian Federal Police, the SFO traced portions of the stolen money back to identifiable victims.

Rather than pursuing a criminal prosecution that had little prospect of success, the SFO instead brought a Part 8 civil recovery claim under POCA. Crucially, this relied on section 281, which allows a court to declare that property alleged to be recoverable property belongs to a victim of unlawful conduct. In 2023, the High Court agreed that the funds could be intercepted and returned directly to victims, rather than transferred to the Treasury as would ordinarily occur following civil recovery.

There is no doubt that this outcome is welcome for the victims, who will now receive compensation more than 20 years after the fraud occurred. It is also understandable that the SFO would wish to highlight this outcome as an example of creative and determined enforcement. However, it would be a mistake to treat this case as evidence of a broader change in policy or capability.

First, the recovery did not depend on any new statutory powers or legislative reform. The SFO relied entirely on provisions of POCA that have existed since 2002, albeit ones that have rarely, if ever, been deployed in this particular way. The court’s decision reflects an interpretation of existing law, not an expansion of it.

More importantly, the factual circumstances were unusually favourable. The defendant was absent from the jurisdiction and did not contest the proceedings. There was no adversarial challenge to the SFO’s case, no dispute over the provenance of the funds, and no competing claims to the recovered property. The victims were clearly identifiable, their losses were well documented and the sums recovered could be traced with a high degree of confidence back to specific individuals.

These features make the case an outlier. In most serious fraud matters, defendants are present, legally represented and highly motivated to resist civil recovery. Asset ownership is often opaque, layered through complex corporate structures or dissipated across multiple jurisdictions. Victim identification may be incomplete or contested, particularly where losses are pooled or indirect. In such cases, attempting to replicate this approach would raise significant legal and practical obstacles.

It is also important to recognise what the SFO’s decision does not represent. This was not a lowering of the evidential bar or a substitution of civil recovery for criminal prosecution as a matter of convenience. On the contrary, the SFO concluded that a criminal conviction was unrealistic due to the defendant’s absence and the passage of time. Civil recovery was used as a pragmatic alternative where the usual route was unavailable, not as an easier option.

Nor should the case be read as signalling a shift towards victim compensation as a primary objective of POCA proceedings. 

Civil recovery remains, at its core, a mechanism for depriving wrongdoers of the proceeds of crime. The redirection of recovered funds to victims in this instance depended on a narrow statutory route and a set of facts that allowed the court to be satisfied as to ownership. That will not be possible in most cases.

For enforcement agencies, the lesson is not that civil recovery can routinely deliver restitution where criminal justice cannot. Rather, it is that existing tools can sometimes be used imaginatively where the facts allow, provided expectations are managed and legal limits respected.

For practitioners and commentators, the risk lies in overstating the significance of the decision. Describing the approach as ‘groundbreaking’ is understandable in a narrow sense, but it should not obscure the reality that this was a bespoke solution to an exceptional problem. Attempts to apply the same strategy in more complex or contested fraud cases are likely to encounter resistance from defendants and close scrutiny from the courts.

The SFO’s success in this case deserves recognition, particularly for the persistence involved in tracing funds across borders and over many years. But it should be seen for what it is: a rare alignment of legal possibility and factual simplicity, not a template for the future of civil recovery.

In that sense, the case tells us less about an expanding enforcement landscape and more about the outer limits of what can be achieved under the existing framework when circumstances align.

Amjid Jabbar is a partner at Stokoe Partnership Solicitors, London