Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the report by Sentry entitled The Taking of South Sudan, what steps her Department is taking to identify and seize criminally-derived assets as a result of state corruption in South Sudan.

The Government’s Anti-Corruption Strategy 2017-2022 sets out commitments to work with other countries to tackle corruption. A number of these are particularly relevant to developing countries – where corruption can result in money laundering via opaque financial centres.

In July 2019 HMG also published its asset recovery action plan which sets out steps we are taking to deliver a whole system approach to depriving criminals of their criminal assets We have also brought in additional civil powers to strengthen the asset recovery regime, such as Unexplained Wealth Orders to require a person to explain the sources of their wealth and Account Freezing Orders, which allow the freezing of assets while investigation is ongoing.