Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether the press release of Her Majesty's Treasury Press Release entitled Crackdown on financial crime made reference to the Written Statement of 6 December 2018 on Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules, HCWS1159.

There is no recent HM Treasury press release entitled “Crackdown on financial crime”. The most recent HM Treasury press release relating to countering illicit finance was published on 7^th December 2018, and was entitled “UK takes top spot in fight against dirty money”. This press release relates to the Mutual Evaluation Report (a once-a-decade assessment) of the UK’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regime. This assessment was conducted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global standard-setter for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing, and contains key findings and follow-up recommendations for countries to consider. The UK has achieved the best ratings of any country assessed so far in this round of evaluations, outperforming significant players in this space (such as the US and other global financial centres). The report places the UK as the strongest overall regime of over 60 countries assessed to date.