An investigation has raised questions about whether some market participants may have been accessing key UK fiscal documents from the Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) before their official release. If hedge fund managers were aware of a way to view market-moving reports hours in advance, they would have had a strong incentive to use it.

The issue came to light after the OBR accidentally made budget documents accessible roughly two hours before publication. During that window, the files were accessed dozens of times from multiple unique IP addresses, most of which remain unidentified. This was not an isolated incident. A previous OBR report had also been accessed shortly before its scheduled release, suggesting a recurring vulnerability rather than a one-off mistake.

According to the investigation, accessing the documents did not require hacking. Users simply needed to guess a standard document URL and adjust the date. The OBR reportedly uploaded files ahead of time and relied on a “prepublication” system to control visibility, but the security around this process had not been closely reviewed for years. The organization itself was described as understaffed and under-resourced, increasing the risk of oversight failures.

The broader implication is that OBR documents may have been available early on multiple occasions over a long period. Industry rumors suggest that some macro hedge funds may have been aware of this weakness and potentially used it to gain early insight into fiscal data. The OBR is now conducting a deeper forensic audit, which may reveal whether this practice was widespread—and whether a quiet source of market advantage has now disappeared.