UK invests £500 million against money laundering

Five hundred agents to follow criminal money. The British government announces an investment of 500 million pounds over three years to strengthen the fight against money laundering and recover assets resulting from crimes. The Interior Ministry cites fintechs, cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence among the developments that complicate the work of investigators.

Key Points

The UK plans to recruit 500 officers to the police, the National Crime Agency and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The program will be financed by a tax levied on certain companies subject to anti-money laundering rules.

Operation Destabilize led to 119 arrests and the seizure of more than 25 million pounds in cash and cryptocurrencies.

UK steps up financial investigations

The new recruits will be split between the police force, the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Crown Prosecution Service, responsible for criminal prosecutions in England and Wales. Their mission will consist in particular of monitoring financial flows, identifying money laundering networks and seizing their assets.

The funding comes from the Economic Crime Levy, a tax paid by companies subject to anti-money laundering regulations when their UK revenues exceed £10.2 million. It will feed into the new national strategy to combat money laundering and recover criminal assets.

According to the NCA, more than £100 billion is laundered each year through the UK or UK business structures. The government says that over the past year, nearly 350 million pounds were taken from criminals and 26 million returned to victims. It also reports nearly 4,000 convictions for money laundering.

From cash to cryptocurrencies: The precedent Destabilizes

The government thus wants to extend the work carried out within the framework of Operation Destabilize. This NCA investigation uncovered two Russian-speaking networks, Smart and TGR, which notably facilitated the conversion of cash into cryptocurrencies for criminal groups. Investigators observed handovers of notes in the United Kingdom followed by transfers of an equivalent value in cryptoassets.

According to the Interior Ministry, the operation resulted in the arrest of 119 people suspected of money laundering and the seizure of more than 25 million pounds, in cash and cryptocurrencies, in less than twelve months. The NCA plans new actions against financial networks linked, among other things, to ransomware and drug trafficking.

Cooperation with the crypto sector is already part of this response. During Operation Atlantic, carried out with American and Canadian partners, investigators and private companies identified more than 20,000 potential victims of cryptocurrency fraud and froze more than $12 million in suspicious funds.