Five hundred new officers will be recruited to tackle money laundering and organised crime as part of a £500 million government crackdown on dirty money.
The officers will be deployed across police forces, the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), with a focus on tracing and seizing the money behind serious and organised crime.
The three-year investment, funded through the economic crime levy, forms part of the Government’s new Anti-Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Strategy. The strategy aims to make it harder for criminals to hide, move or profit from the proceeds of crime.
The Government says investigators will target major money laundering networks, including Russian and other international operations. Cutting off their finances is intended to disrupt crimes including drug trafficking, people smuggling and the use of sham businesses.
New figures show almost £350 million in criminal assets was seized and more than £1 billion in illicit funds was denied to criminals during a year-long crackdown. More than £26 million was returned to victims, while 2,700 illicit finance operations were disrupted.
Money laundering convictions have also risen to almost 4,000, according to the Government.
The NCA estimates that more than £100 billion is laundered through the UK or UK corporate structures each year. It says money laundering networks help conceal profits from crimes including fraud, drug trafficking, people smuggling and corruption, while emerging technologies such as fintech, cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence are creating new challenges.
The new officers will build on the NCA’s Operation Destabilise, which targeted Russian money laundering networks and which led to 119 people being arrested and more than £25 million in cash and cryptocurrency being seized in less than 12 months.
Sal Melki, Deputy Director for Economic Crime at the National Crime Agency, yesterday said: ‘Financial crime is a corrosive threat that harms our communities and economy. It puts money in the hands of those that traffic, abuse, scam and corrupt. It undercuts legitimate business, deprives our public services and furthers the interests of nations hostile to the UK and our way of life.
‘Combatting financial crime has become more complex as criminals embrace new technologies to increase the scale and harm of their offending. Our foundations are strong, and now the NCA and our partners are driving a systemic shift to modernise our approach to combatting all forms of illicit finance. This strategy and the investment behind it will be key to achieving this.
‘It will allow us to build an innovative financial intelligence service for the UK, deepen our public private partnerships, and – crucially – increase our operational capacity to proactively target money launderers and the financial architecture they rely on. We will pursue them across borders, seize their criminal wealth and remove them from our businesses, institutions and high streets.’
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