Kathleen Harris, former head of the Fraud Business Group at the UK Serious Fraud Office, will join the law firm of Arnold & Porter in London in early June. She will be a member of Arnold & Porter's white-collar criminal defense practice, further expanding its international white collar and enforcement capabilities.

In her role at the SFO, where she served from 2008 to 2011, Harris revamped the agency's critical policy function and headed up the domain responsible for investment fraud. She was responsible for the SFO's use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and its responses to sensitive Freedom of Information and Data Protection Act requests, and had been asked to oversee all of the SFO's fraud cases.

In addition, she has supervised a number of high-profile bribery investigations. In September 2010, she was one of the UK's official examiners on behalf of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that reviewed U.S. compliance with the convention. In the policy arena, Harris was a key participant in developing seminal guidelines on key issues including plea negotiations, civil remedies, civil recovery, corporate prosecutions, deferred investigations, and prosecution agreements.

Working with the Attorney General's Office, Crown Prosecution Service and the Ministry of Justice, she played a central role in the task of formulating the Guidance for Prosecutors in relation to the Bribery Act. She advised Ministers from the Attorney General's Office, Home Office, and Ministry of Justice in relation to overall anti-fraud enforcement strategy.

From 2007 to 2008, Harris served as a senior strategic policy advisor in the Attorney General's Office, providing comprehensive legal and policy support during the review of the SFO by former New York prosecutor Jessica de Grazia, which resulted in a major reorganization of the agency. From 2003 to 2007, she served as a Prosecution Team Leader at HM Revenue & Customs (formerly Inland Revenue), taking the lead on numerous money laundering cases, including the prosecution of sensitive and novel tax fraud cases.