The National Criminal Intelligence Service faces being inundated with money laundering reports once regulations in the Proceeds of Crime Act are extended to cover accountants, lawyers and other professions later this year.
Link: Fears over crime reporting
According to financial crime experts at the academic journal Fraud Intelligence, 56,000 suspicious activity reports were filed with NCIS in 2002. The rate is currently around 7,000 a month, but that could be about to expand significantly.
It is the job of NCIS to channel reports to police forces around the country for investigation, but the concern is that there are too few resources available to handle financial crime.
Timon Molloy, editor at Fraud Intelligence, said: ‘More resources need to be provided to the UK’s police forces for frontline white collar crime investigations if the toughest proceeds of crime legislation in the world is to be matched at last by effective action against fraud and money laundering.’
The Proceeds of Crime Act makes it mandatory to report suspicions of money laundering, a move that has been criticised for undermining client confidentiality.
Recently, Society of Professional Accountants chairman Peter Mitchell lambasted the new laws claiming they were an ‘attack’ on our ‘economic society’.
However, the campaign group Transparency International claimed this week that money laundering in the UK was much higher than reported. The Home Office puts the value at around £18bn a year, but the group said it was probably much larger and a significant threat to future growth.
For more see www.ncis.co.uk
