The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is pressuring ministers to ensure that tougher US-style powers are available to the new Economic Crime Agency (ECA) once it is formed, the Gazette has learned.

The Gazette understands that the SFO, which would be wholly subsumed by and form the bulk of the ECA, wants ministers to extend corporate liability along US lines, so that it would apply to most employees of a company as well as senior executives.

The SFO is also pushing for US-style heavy fines and longer jail sentences, as well as the introduction of deferred prosecutions and a new enforcement system to cope with white-collar crime spread across multiple jurisdictions.

SFO director Richard Alderman confirmed that the agency is discussing a range of new powers with ministers prior to the creation of the ECA, but declined to comment on specifics.

He said: ‘It would be important to look at the tools the new ECA will need in order to maximise its effectiveness in countering serious economic crime.’

He added: ‘Lord Justice Thomas said in Innospec that fines for serious corporate offending need to be very high and along US lines. We are waiting for future guidance from the judges to see how they will apply this in particular cases.’

The SFO was criticised by Thomas in the Innospec case for entering into a plea bargain with the chemicals company, which Thomas fined $12.7m (£8m) for bribing Indonesian government officials. Thomas said in his judgment in March that the SFO had no legal power to agree plea bargains, and that the resulting fine was ‘wholly inadequate’.

Last year, the SFO is understood to have approached parliament with a request for new powers.

The ECA will investigate and prosecute all corporate crime under plans announced by chancellor George Osborne in June.