These powers become broader if Read has reasonable grounds to believe that an offence involving serious or complex fraud may have been committed.
In that case she can require someone to attend a meeting, answer questions and produce documents.
The SFO issued a total of 594 notices under these powers in the 12 months to June - down from 809 in same period to 2014, and 1177 in 2013. The targets of those powers were not disclosed and, in any event, the SFO is now much more tight-lipped about its operations than under previous regimes.
The SFO listed myriad possible reasons why the numbers are down. One factor was that it was receiving more electronic information within a single notice, whereas before the SFO might have needed to use multiple notices to get hard copy documents.
A spokeswoman also pointed out that its current cases are generally bigger and more complex and can involve search warrants (up by 30 per cent) and therefore fewer notices were required or more information was collected in one instance.
She also said the SFO was more targeted in seeking information.
"On occasion, we simply get more voluntary information or interviews and therefore do not need to compel the parties involved," she said.
Career suicide
New Zealand's Darrell Read (not a known relation of Julie) said it would have been "career suicide" to help his biggest client rig bank rates, a London court heard this week.
Read, known to his colleagues as "Big Nose", is the first of six accused to give evidence while defending charges of conspiracy to defraud.
The 50-year-old, who moved to New Zealand from Britain in 2007, worked on the euro yen cash desk at brokage house ICAP and allegedly helped UBS trader Tom Hayes rig Libor - the London interbank offered rate.
A British trade group sets the Libor every morning after banks submit estimates of borrowing costs and it is alleged that bankers made submissions that were beneficial to Hayes.
Hayes, currently appealing his 14-year jail sentence, was the first person convicted of manipulating these rates after his trial this year.
Read - who doesn't want to become the second - reportedly told the Southwark Crown Court this week that he had no contact with the people who submitted the rates and that his clients would not have listened to his suggestions on the rate.
The Financial Times reported Read saying that if such activity got out, "it'd spread through like wildfire around the market".
"You'd go from hero to zero in no time," Read reportedly told the jury.
However, according to a transcript of an interview with Britain's SFO from last year, Read told authorities he would claim credit for Libor movements. "If I was asked by Hayes to try to get Libors higher and they did go up, I would always claim credit," said a news report.
Taxing headache
If the tax department is celebrating bankrupting arch-nemesis John George Russell this week, it will be the Official Assignee who is left with the hangover.
Inland Revenue would not comment after the 81-year-old's adjudication on Thursday, but Business Insider suspects at least a few tax officials will be toasting their perceived victory over Russell, who owed IRD $500 million by the time of his bankruptcy.
Russell, who developed what the Court of Appeal called a "blatant tax avoidance scheme", has been a thorn in Inland Revenue's side for decades.
While IRD is finally rid of the former merchant banker, he now becomes the problem of the Official Assignee in Auckland, David Harte, whose office will need to sort through his financial affairs.
If those are anything like Russell's tax situation, which a High Court judge described as being of "labyrinthine complexity", Harte has an unenviable task ahead of him.
Too busy by far
Bean-counter Keith Arnold McLeod has been severely reprimanded for doing too much work.
McLeod, an associate chartered accountant in Auckland, earned too much within a 12-month period for a bookkeeper who doesn't hold a certificate of public practice.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants' conduct committee found McLeod was offering services to the public well above the allowed income threshold of $13,000 a year.
McLeod, whose client base was among friends and acquaintances, appeared to have operated outside NZICA's rules for a long time, the committee's decision said.
"The committee considered that the member's breach of the Rules was serious and met the threshold to warrant referral to the Disciplinary Tribunal. It was satisfied, however, that the complaint could be adequately dealt with by way of a consent order with terms that the member receive a severe reprimand and pay costs to NZICA of $1800, contingent on the member giving an undertaking to resign from membership of NZICA and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand forthwith," this month's decision said.
