Saturday 21st December 2024
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Comsure operates in:the UK, Jersey, Guernsey

Dirty money reports at a record level

The UK Time newspaper has reported today (11/01/2019) that the National Crime Agency said yesterday.

  • a record number of suspected dirty money cases were reported last year as awareness of Britain’s role in high-end financial crime grows,

The number of suspicious activity reports

  • rose by about 10 per cent to 463,938 during 2017-18,
  • with a 20 per cent rise to 22,196 in cases linked to potential money laundering.

There were 40 arrests in 28 inquiries, and the National Crime Agency (NCA) said that interventions stopped £52 million being flushed through the UK.

There were signs that some sectors previously exploited were becoming more conscious of their responsibilities to report suspect transactions.

Reports made by

  1. High value dealers, such as fine art and jewellery outlets, made 249 reports, a 30 per cent increase on 2016-17.
  2. Education providers such as public schools reported 35 cases compared with eight in the previous 12 months.

Concerns remain that

  • lawyers, accountants and tax advisers, some of whom provide professional services to criminals, made only 7,800 reports, 1.68 per cent of the total.

Terrorists

  • Almost 3,000 cases were forwarded to the National Terrorist Financial Investigation Unit because of concerns that suspect money was linked to terrorist groups.

Donald Toon, of the NCA, said

  • that reporting suspicious cash flows “enhances the intelligence picture against serious and organised crime threats”.

Ava Lee, an anti-corruption campaigner at Global Witness, said:

  • “Even though the UK as a whole appears to slowly be waking up to the scale of its dirty money problem, lawyers and accountants — the gatekeepers of the financial system — are asleep on the job.
  • It’s frankly laughable that legal professionals made only 0.5 per cent of the reports submitted, even lower than last year

To read more click here


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