Asked by: Lloyd Hatton (Labour - South Dorset)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing ring-fenced funding for taking criminal enforcement measures against professional enablers of economic crimes.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Home Office)
Professional enablers are a critical facilitator of serious and organised crime, particularly in helping criminals and corrupt elites move and hide their illicit funds across the world, including in the UK.
The National Economic Crime Centre launched a cross-system strategy to tackle the serious and organised crime threat posed by professional enablers earlier this year. This sets out a series of actions for the public and private sectors to strengthen the UK’s response to professional enablers and includes commitments to enhance collective understanding, improve public-private data sharing, make better use of powers and intervention tools, and develop joint disruption strategies to tackle the threat.
Criminal justice interventions and regulatory interventions are essential to driving a response. Professional enabler cases are often longer and more protracted than other cases.
While we recognise the potential benefits of ring-fencing funding, we must ensure that our approach to funding remains sufficiently agile to tackle this increasingly complex threat. A critical component of this is the Economic Crime (Anti-Money Laundering) Levy, which provides sustainable, long-term funding to combat economic crime, helping law enforcement agencies pursue criminals and their enablers. This funding, paired with other targeted investment, enables the delivery of key outcomes to protect the UK’s national security whilst supporting economic growth.
Asked by: Lloyd Hatton (Labour - South Dorset)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many times have exchange of notes arrangements been used in investigations relating to economic crime to share beneficial ownership information between the UK, Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories in the last 12 months.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Home Office)
In 2016 the UK, the three Crown Dependencies and six participating British Overseas Territories committed to share company beneficial ownership information on a bilateral basis between their participating law enforcement agencies.
A statutory review was undertaken in 2019 to review the effectiveness of the first operational 18 months of the Exchange of Notes arrangements, covering the period from 1 July 2017 to 31 December 2018. The review found that in this period, 296 requests were made. Nearly all of these were originated by UK law enforcement agencies and 118 asked for multiple pieces of information in a single request. This equates on average to nearly four requests per week. The full findings of the 2019 statutory review are available here: Statutory review of the implementation of the exchange of notes on beneficial ownership between the United Kingdom, Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
The performance of the Exchange of Notes Arrangements remains subject to annual internal review, with the last 12 months from 2023-24 due for internal review in 2025. UK Law Enforcement Agencies have reported that the arrangements continue to add value by supporting complex investigations into the financial affairs of individuals believed to be involved in serious and organised crime.