Part 5 – Miscellaneous Regulatory and investigatory powers Section 211: Serious Fraud Office: pre-investigation powers
This section amends section 2A of the Criminal Justice Act 1987 ("CJA") to allow the Director of the Serious Fraud Office ("SFO") to exercise their investigation powers in order to determine whether to start an investigation. This will enable the SFO to require a person to answer questions, furnish information, or produce documents at a pre-investigation stage of any of its cases, whether they relate to suspected fraud, bribery, or corruption.
	Subsections (2) to (4) remove references in section 2A of the CJA to international bribery and corruption, which currently restrict the use of the Director’s powers at a pre-investigation stage to cases involving such conduct.
	Subsection (5) is a consequential amendment to omit paragraph 2 of Schedule 1 to the Bribery Act 2010, which amended section 2A of the CJA to insert those references.