Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish the number of requests for mutual legal assistance that have been made to foreign jurisdictions to recover criminal assets laundered abroad since 2016.

The number of outgoing mutual legal assistance requests for money laundering offences transmitted via the Home Office was 83 in 2016 and 58 in the first half of 2017.

The data does not include requests transmitted directly under the EU’s Council Framework Decisions 2003/577/JHA (Freezing Orders) and 2006/783/JHA (Confiscation Orders). Outgoing requests for restraint or confiscation made under the 2003 and 2006 EU Framework decisions are sent by the CPS directly to the relevant EU Member State.

Please note that these figures are taken from local management information, and have not been quality assured to the level of published National Statistics. As such they should be treated as provisional and therefore subject to change.