28 January 2025
SFO Unexplained Wealth Orders – new focus for illicit finance?
On 17 January, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) secured its first Unexplained Wealth Order, in respect of a property believed to have been purchased with the proceeds of a £100 million fraud.
3 April 2024
UK FIU report reveals more efficient and better quality SARs reporting landscape
The NCA’s UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU) has published its latest Annual Report (somewhat later in the year than usual). The UKFIU is responsible for receiving, analysing and disseminating intelligence submitted through the Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) regime and its role is to alert law enforcement agencies, both at home and abroad, to potential instances of money laundering and terrorist financing.
17 November 2023
What to do after a raid by the Serious Fraud Office?
Many of the SFO’s most notable recent investigations have begun with dawn raids, so-called because they normally occur very early in the morning. These raids can be a disorientating and uncomfortable experience in themselves, but as we explain further below, unfortunately they normally signal the beginning of a major SFO investigation. The period between arrest and charge – which can be lengthy in complex white-collar crime investigations – is absolutely critical. So, what should you and your legal team be doing in this period?
14 March 2023
Expansion of failure to prevent: The theory is almost reality
For more than a decade, lawyers, academics and business representatives have been discussing the need for a new approach to corporate criminal liability for economic crime. With significant expansion of the tried and tested failure to prevent (FTP) structure now imminent, and further debate on the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill scheduled for late March, there are questions still to be answered.
2 February 2023
‘Made in China’ as Possible Supply Chain Money Laundering
It is estimated that 30% of the world’s production of cotton originates in China. Of that cotton 85% originates in Xinjiang, which is the centre of the Uyghur atrocities. Recently before the High Court, the World Uyghur Congress (“the WUC”) argued that UK authorities were under a duty to block and/or launch money laundering investigations into the many imports of Xinjiang cotton brought into the UK - many by household names in the clothing industry – because of the high likelihood of prison and forced labour forming the start of the supply chain