Robert Wardle is either a meddlesome bureaucrat or a model civil servant, to a fault.

The director of the Serious Fraud Office today releases his office’s annual report with yet another assertion that it was his decision – not Tony Blair’s, not the attorney general’s – to abandon the investigation into BAE Systems. Mr Wardle received three briefings from the British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who told him that the inquiry put British lives at risk, because the Saudis were threatening to withdraw cooperation in the War on Terror if the pursuit of corruption in the al-Yamamah deal continued.

Mr Wardle is right that it his job to weigh SFO investigations in light of the broader public interest. But, frankly, he was put in an impossible position. He had no way of knowing the credibility of the intelligence presented to him about the threat to British lives. And nor should he have been asked to make that judgment. National security is not his area of experience or expertise. Corporate fraud is.

As a result, the pressures on the SFO to land a conviction in the continuing investigations into BAE’s procurement practices in half a dozen countries from Tanzania to Romania is all the greater. For Mr Wardle has done the honourable thing by the Government and, yet, badly damaged the reputation of the SFO. If the Department of Justice uncovers wrongdoing, the British anti-corruption authorities will look craven and pathetic.

This is all the more difficult for Mr Wardle, who will give up his job at the SFO after a long, and until last year, distinguished career.

Then again, he would not be the first lame duck to bite back.

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