Court documents:
- Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA)
- Agreed Statement of facts
- Charges against the defendant
- Undertaking made pursuant to the DPA
- The Director of the Serious Fraud Office v Ultra Electronics Holding Ltd [2026] EWCR 4 (High Court judgment approving the DPA).
In May 2026 the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) entered its first Deferred Prosecution Agreement in half a decade with Ultra Electronics, a British defence and security company. This £15 million agreement concluded an eight-year bribery investigation into the company’s bidding for multi-million dollar infrastructure contracts in Algeria and Oman.
In 2012 Ultra Electronics won a contract valued at £150 – 200 million to deliver an Information Technology and Systems project for airports in Oman – the company’s most valuable project at the time. Although this contract was never performed, the company’s activities in the tendering process triggered an internal investigation the same year. Ultimately, the investigation concluded that there was no evidence of bribery and corruption in Oman.
In early 2018, the company’s focus switched to Algeria, where media reports had been emerging which implicated the company in bribery while bidding for an airport and public infrastructure project. Ultra Electronics conducted another internal investigation, this time led by solicitors, which resulted in the company self-reporting to the SFO.
The SFO launched a criminal investigation into the company’s projects in Algeria, eventually inviting the company to negotiate a DPA in 2021. However, all potential for negotiation came to a halt when the company disclosed their internal report and other key documents on Oman to the SFO, informing them that their internal investigation had concluded that there was no evidence of wrongdoing. The SFO rejected this conclusion and withdrew from the DPA negotiations in November 2022.
A far wider investigation was then launched into the company’s activities in Oman and China amongst other jurisdictions, headed by a new legal team. The company- which by this point was under new management- engaged in “adopted a renewed cooperative approach” leading to a resumption of the negotiation talks between the parties.
The SFO and Ultra Electronics Holding’s DPA was formally approved by the High Court in 2026. Ultra Electronics accepted that they had failed to prevent bribery in relation to the Algeria and Omani projects. The company was ultimately fined £10 million, with the additional requirement to pay the SFO’s legal costs of £4.8 million.
