The Serious Fraud Office (SFO), which has a 37 million pound budget for the fiscal year ending March 2015, is also planning to use the extra money for its ongoing investigation into alleged bribery at Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc, Bloomberg said on its website.

It added that the SFO's request, which could be made in coming weeks, would probably exceed the 19 million pounds of additional funding the fraud agency sought in January for the previous fiscal year.

The SFO said at the time that it needed the extra money in part to pay for its inquiry into Libor benchmark fixing, a probe into Barclays fundraising from Qatar and to meet costs linked to a 300 million pound damages suit launched by the Tchenguiz brothers property developers.

The nature of the SFO's work means it needs additional funding from time to time for its very largest and most complex investigations and prosecutions, Bloomberg quoted the SFO as saying in an emailed statement.

The SFO could not be reached for comment late outside of regular business hours on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Richa Naidu in Bangalore; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Stocks treated in this article : Rolls-Royce Holding PLC, Barclays PLC