Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment (a) her Department and (b) the National Crime Agency have made of the potential impact of extended family networks on facilitating the use of informal value transfer systems, including hawala, for the purposes of money laundering, terrorist financing and people trafficking.

The latest version of the Government’s National Risk Assessment (NRA) of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing was published in July 2025, and reflects expert contributions from government, law enforcement and the private sector. The NRA 2025 specifically covers the risks from Informal Value Transfer Systems (IVTS), including Hawala networks. The NRA notes that IVTS can be exploited by criminals and terrorist actors. Furthermore, where IVTS are identified in UK money laundering investigations, they are principally linked to international laundering networks given their access to stores of value in locations which are useful to criminals.

In addition, the NCA published a National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime in 2025 (the NSA). The NSA identifies that IVTS are a widely used method of transferring money and are legal in the UK as long as the operator adheres to the Money Laundering Regulations and registers with HMRC for supervision. However, it is also known that serious and organised criminals use IVTS as a parallel banking facility due to the perception of lower chances of detection.