Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

New measures to deprive criminals of their ill-gotten gains have been outlined by the Government in draft legislation published on 5 March. The intention to publish these proposals was announced in the Queen’s Speech in December 2000, and the proposals were re-introduced to Parliament in the Queen's Speech 2001, having failed to pass through Parliament before the calling of the General Election on June 7th.

The draft clauses contain proposals of a number of new measures.

• A Criminal Assets Recovery Agency (CARA) to be established next year or 2003 depending on the Parliamentary timetable. The Agency would have a Director accountable to the Home Secretary and a Centre of Excellence for training and accreditation of financial investigators.
  

• A new civil recovery scheme, allowing the Director of CARA to sue in the High Court to recover the proceeds of criminal conduct.
  

• New court-approved powers to help investigators working for the police, other law enforcement authorities and CARA, including in some cases accredited civilian financial investigators, to trace assets.
  

• Giving the Director of CARA the ability to carry out tax functions, for example income tax, capital gains, corporation and inheritance taxes, where he has reasonable grounds to suspect that a person’s income or gains were derived from crime. This would apply to individuals, companies or partnerships.
  

• Crown courts would hear all asset restraint and criminal confiscation hearings. Courts would have the ability to apply confiscation orders to all offences (all summary offences to be included rather than specified ones as now).
  

• Restraint of assets would be brought forward from when a person is charged (or about to be charged) with an offence to the start of the criminal investigation.
  

• Unifying money laundering legislation to remove loopholes, for example, distinctions between drug and non-drug offences.
  

• Extending the offence of failing to report knowledge or suspicion of drug money laundering in two ways: by including any money laundering (instead of just drug money laundering) and by penalising negligent failure to report (i.e. where a person had reasonable grounds to suspect that another person was engaged in money laundering). The new extended offence would apply to people working in the sectors covered by the Money Laundering Regulations. The penalty is 5 years imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.

The Bill would apply UK-wide, with CARA operating in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Agency would not operate in Scotland. Instead, building on existing Scottish arrangements, criminal confiscation would remain the responsibility of the Lord Advocate while civil recovery would rest with Scottish Ministers.

Funding to set up CARA was announced last July, giving a total of £54 million over the next three years.

Where legislation is not necessary, work is ongoing to ensure that crime does not pay. This includes the first UK-wide Asset Recovery Strategy which is being drawn together by representatives from relevant Government departments and agencies, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the National Crime Squad, the Crown Prosecution Service, Serious Fraud Office, the Financial Services Authority, the UK Anti-Drug Co-ordination Unit and the Association of Policy Authorities. Topics currently being considered as part of the strategy are:

• setting a national standard for financial investigators

• setting targets to measure the success of asset recovery

• pooling and sharing of information

• the Recovered Assets Fund to support the strategy.

The publication of the draft clauses of the Proceeds of Crime Bill follows a report by the Cabinet Office Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) Recovering the Proceeds of Crime published in June 2000.

For a full copy of the draft clauses of the Proceeds of Crime Bill click here.

On 6 February 2002 the Bill complete it passage through the Committee Stage of Parliament. You can find out more about the stages a Bill goes through before becoming law from an informative guide at the Parliament Website.