Heading up the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is no mean feat. The quick thinking of criminals taking advantage of new technology to evade prosecution and the cross-border nature of many cases make chasing major fraud a frustrating as well as highly specialised task.

At the helm of the SFO is Robert Wardle, a lawyer and career civil servant. He has just finished his inaugural year in office, following in the footsteps of the high profile Rosalind Wright. Wardle has been at the SFO since its creation, a tenure of 16 years, and knows the department inside out. He began his time there as a case controller and had been an assistant director for just over a decade, before his surprise appointment last year.

The SFO was set up in 1988, born out of the Criminal Justice Act 1987. This new government department, its director appointed by and accountable to the attorney general, was created on the recommendation of the 1986 Roskill Report into fraud trials. Setting up a new, unified organisation responsible for the detection, investigation and prosecution of serious fraud cases was the main recommendation of the report, in the light of public dis-satisfaction with the existing system. To its credit, the SFO now has a conviction rate of about 70%, having prosecuted more than 550 defendants in hundreds of trials.

Key to the SFO's brief is that cases are accepted only where the suspected fraud seems so serious or complex that its investigation should be carried out by those responsible for its prosecution. Major and complicated fraud, in excess of £1m, is the focus of the SFO's work.

Wardle's appointment was seen by some as a chance to wipe the slate clean after a series of high profile failures. Unfortunately, the beginning of his directorship was marred by the collapse of a case brought against Monaco-based businessman Andrew Regan. The jury's decision to acquit lost the SFO an estimated £1.5m and caused undoubted embarrassment to Wardle, the case controller.

To describe Wardle as 'the quiet man' might trawl up unwelcome memories of former Tory leaders, but he is indeed a calm, softly spoken individual who obviously steers a consensual approach at the SFO. He also bucks the Government trend of bringing in 'blue sky thinkers' short on hands-on experience to shake up its departments.

Of all the developments in the job in the past 12 months, Wardle is understandably most excited about the increase in funding earmarked for the SFO. A major source of new cash is its partnership with the City of London Police, which last December announced plans to expand its economic crimes department by bringing in more experts specifically for the investigation of fraud. The SFO will be able to draw on this extra capacity for cases in the home counties as well as in London – the majority of serious fraud cases originate in the southeast, which, under the police definition, comprises 13 forces.

"We are particularly grateful to the Corporation of London for pushing this forward," says Wardle, who adds that an expansion of the fraud squad allowing it to deal with more cases is "very exciting".

"We have been revving up work on recovering criminal assets and looking more aggressively at making sure they are recovered. People often prefer to stay in prison rather than pay up, but attacking the financial element of crime is essential," he says.

Wardle is keen for the City of London police and the SFO to work closely in training the new staff that will be recruited. "It makes for a better investigative tool, training everyone together." Finding good investigators is a tough job. Wardle says they are in great demand and difficult to find; the SFO tries to grow its own as much as it can.

The majority of investigators are SFO staff, but it also has secondees from other government departments – such as Customs & Excise – as well as from City firms including Lovells and Norton Rose. Out of a staff of about 230, 40 are lawyers, including former Herbert Smith lawyer Graham More. One of its assistant directors recently spent six months working in Baghdad for the coalition provisional authority.

Overall, Wardle says he hopes to use the cooperation with the City of London police as a way of making sure the SFO is functioning in the best possible way. "I want to examine our long-held practices, question why we do things in a certain way and whether that is the best way to do it," he says.

Presumably, this is a mix of Wardle's leader-ship being the new broom to sweep away old assumptions about the SFO and a perpetual need to justify costs and expenditure. He is under renewed pressure to keep tabs on the SFO's efficiency after the recent leaked report into government efficiency. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown wants public sector efficiency savings amounting to £20bn a year by 2008, much of that achieved through improved IT.

For its part, the SFO has introduced a new document management system to speed up and improve the efficiency in dealing with cases. "We have tested it in three cases and hope to roll it out for use on all new cases," Wardle explains. "It will help us get cases to court and will assist with the presentation of evidence to juries."

But despite the belt-tightening going on elsewhere in the civil service, the Attorney General has managed to secure substantial extra funding for the SFO itself. This year's budget rose by £7m to £30.4m, increasing again to £35.4m for 2005. "We will expand our investigative activity in line with this increase in funding and make sure it all goes in the front line," Wardle says.

As the SFO expands thanks to the extra funding, it is also looking for new premises. Wardle says it is looking at the possibility of colocating with the City of London police, a move that would make significant savings and make joint training and a single IT system much easier.

"I would very much like for us be under one roof, but whether or not we will achieve this within the next two years, I do not know," he says.

This raises the question of whether the SFO and the City of London police will ever merge completely – the latter's economic crimes department works very closely with Wardle's team. He denies that a merger has ever been on the cards.

"We work together with officers from forces across the country," he adds.

But the funding to expand joint operations, and the plans to move into one office, suggest the SFO's coexistence with the City of London Police could develop further in the long term. Wardle says there has been talk of a national fraud squad for a while, but says that in terms of priorities, the SFO's current arrangements with the City of London police are a good step forward.

Wardle will not be pushed on the topic of how the new Serious Organised Crime Agency's (SOCA's) brief will dovetail with the SFO's work. Home Secretary David Blunkett announced his plans to set up SOCA earlier this year and, while it is expected to be operational by 2006, it is still in the early stages of planning and has yet to recruit a director.

SOCA will target organised gangs and crime chiefs, bringing together the responsibilities of the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), the National Crime Squad (NCS) and parts of the immigration service and Customs & Excise. The Government envisages it as an 'elite' law enforcement agency, with 5,000 investigators working on cases. This raises the spectre of the sought-after investigators being even more thinly spread across government departments than at present.

"The sort of cases SOCA will take on are probably going to be unlike the ones we deal with. Our investigations are more reactive, looking at cases of suspected fraud that have already been uncovered," Wardle says.

The SFO currently liaises with the NCIS and the NCS, having carried out searches with them on joint investigations. "I see no reason why we should not work with SOCA if an appropriate case comes along, and I have no difficulty with passing on information. But the circumstances in which this might happen are relatively few."

Blunkett also announced plans this year to give the SFO powers to compel production of documents. The department's ever-increasing powers to uncover fraud have inevitably had an effect on lawyers. The Proceeds of Crime Act, which came into effect in 2002, has since been extended to clamp down further on money laundering. Where the provisions previously only applied to banks, lawyers, accountants and estate agents could now all face prison if they fail to report suspected fraud.

Although Wardle is not aware of any lawyer having been convicted under the new, tougher law, he says they have no excuse not to be aware of the changes to the Proceeds of Crime Act – and they have a positive duty to report suspected fraud.

"I am sure all the professions know that criminals have to launder their money and that one of the best ways of doing that is through a respectable firm. I am sure the lawyers in these firms are all well aware of their obligations."

In terms of his plans for the next year, Wardle says he will concentrate on working more closely with the Crown Prosecution Service and other government departments. Improving mutual legal assistance with colleagues overseas is a major focus area, especially as the International Crime Co-operation Act has recently come into force. This will streamline the process of obtaining evidence from overseas, as well as introducing a European arrest warrant. Euro-just, the European Union's (EU's) judicial cooperation unit, has helped in finding out who to deal with in member states.

"It is very important to have this kind of assistance. If you need to freeze money in Switzerland, for example, it helps to know who to deal with as speed is essential," Wardle says.

In anticipation of the expansion of the EU, a team from the SFO has visited some of the accession states, including Slovakia, to address fraud squads on how the SFO operates. The EU's expansion will, Wardle says, present many more challenges in dealing with international fraud.

He is clearly relieved that the future of the SFO has been cemented with some substantial funding commitments for the next two years. But with the creation of SOCA on the horizon, and the Government's commitment to crack down on organised crime through this new agency, Wardle may be forgiven for feeling uneasy about the future beyond 2006.

Serious fraud is on the increase, but Wardle needs to make sure the SFO is capturing the right cases. Once the SFO's team of investigators is expanded, it will surely be looking to make a string of high profile prosecutions to polish its reputation and secure its future.