Serious Fraud Office Completes E-Discovery Review of Past Convictions

UK SFO Cases & Publications

Published February 12th, 2026

Detected March 13th, 2026

Summary

The UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has completed its review of 66 past convictions that used its legacy Autonomy e-discovery system. The SFO found no material casting doubt on the safety of these convictions. A separate issue affecting approximately 20 cases due to digital container file expansion is also being reviewed.

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What changed

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has announced the near completion of its review of 66 historical conviction cases that utilized its legacy Autonomy e-discovery system. This review was conducted to identify any material that might cast doubt upon the safety of past convictions. The SFO confirms that no such material has been found in relation to these 66 cases. Additionally, a separate, recently discovered issue concerning the expansion of digital container files on the Autonomy system, potentially affecting around 20 cases, is also under review. One case related to this secondary issue has been resolved with no missed material, and steps are being taken to review the remaining cases.

While this notice indicates no current findings of compromised convictions, it highlights the SFO's commitment to post-conviction disclosure obligations. Affected defendants who have not been contacted are advised to reach out to the SFO. The SFO is coordinating its review process with the Attorney General's Office and HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate. Regulated entities, particularly those involved in past SFO investigations or convictions, should note the SFO's proactive approach to reviewing its disclosure processes and systems, even for legacy issues. No specific compliance actions are mandated by this notice, but it underscores the importance of robust e-discovery and disclosure practices.

Source document (simplified)

News story

Update on the Serious Fraud Office’s e-discovery review

Our Director of Operations Emma Luxton provides information on our review of past e-discovery software.

From: Serious Fraud Office Published 12 February 2026

In a February 2025 post we committed to updating on the findings of our review of past cases on our legacy e-discovery system and this work is almost complete.

We identified 66 historic conviction cases that used our legacy Autonomy system, which we needed to check to see whether there was any material which might cast doubt upon the safety of any past conviction.

Only three cases now remain to be reviewed, and I can confirm that we have not found any material which casts doubt upon the safety of any past conviction.

Reviewing these past cases has been a crucial step in meeting our post-conviction disclosure obligations to defendants and we have contacted every defendant possible to share the findings and process of review with them.

If you are a defendant and believe your case may have been affected, and have not heard from us already, please contact us directly via publicenquiries@sfo.gov.uk.

A further update

In late November 2025, we discovered a different issue with our legacy e-discovery system Autonomy, which means we have begun some further reviews on past cases.

This issue relates to how some digital container files were expanded on our system, meaning some items may not have been available for review on the platform.

We believe the issue may have affected approximately 20 cases, of which we have already resolved one finding no evidence of any material having been missed. Steps are now being taken to review the other cases.

As before, we continue to discuss this work and our review process with the Attorney General’s Office and HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate.

We take our obligations as a responsible prosecutor very seriously and we recognise that, although we have not seen any evidence of this, we need to satisfy ourselves that no relevant and disclosable material was missed.

This issue does not affect our current e-discovery system.

We will share a further update on conclusion of the reviews.