Spotlight on Corruption

***NEW REPORT*** After the Autumn budget offered small change for tackling economic crime, more resourcing for economic crime fighting agencies is urgently needed.  📉 With fraud prosecutions plummeting by 64.6% between 2017/18 and 2022/23, and just 0.2% recovered in 2023/24 of the over £100 billion a year the National Crime Agency assesses is laundered through the UK, the next Phase of the Spending Review in late Spring will be a crucial moment to put targeted and strategic resourcing into these agencies’ economic crime fighting capabilities.  📒 Our new report – titled "Forging a virtuous circle: Reinvesting fines and criminal assets to turbocharge the fight against economic crime" – finds that economic crime enforcement raises huge sums for the government through seizing criminal assets and imposing fines, but see little of these funds reinvested in their budgets.  💷 Of the £4 billion generated for the government through economic crime enforcement between 2017/18 and 2023/24, just 17.6% was reinvested into agencies or into crime reduction and community projects. If even 50% of these funds had been reinvested, economic crime regulation and enforcement would have received an extra £233 million a year, nearly double the annual investment underpinning the 2023-2026 Economic Crime Plan. 🏦 With all fines contributing to this £4 billion sum going to the Treasury, the report finds that the scheme for reinvesting a proportion of seized criminal assets – the Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme (ARIS) – is flawed: 1️⃣ One third of ARIS spending of up to £190 million over the last seven years appears to be unaccounted for in Home Office data. 2️⃣ Just 3% of the £116.5 million distributed to agencies via ARIS in 2022/23 was publicly accounted for in their annual reports. 3️⃣ Annual spending rules prevent long-term, strategic spending and the ARIS may drive agencies to pursue low-hanging fruit to boost their budgets.  ⛵ While some ARIS funds are used to incentivise agencies and drive innovation in asset recovery, in other instances the lack of oversight means it is spent on pet projects – in one case funding an inter-police force yacht race from Portsmouth to Liverpool – rather than on increasing the UK’s asset recovery efforts as it is meant to do. 📣 The government should reinvest criminal assets and fines into an innovative new Economic Crime Fighting Fund to turbocharge enforcement. Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/eyvjGvpX #economiccrime #reinvestment #ECFF

🕟 Late yesterday afternoon the government slipped out the latest tranche of departmental lobbying transparency data. But even careful readers won't be much the wiser. 👇 Here's Spotlight on Corruption's take on why the current system is not fit for purpose and what needs to happen to fix it. #lobbying #transparency #data

🆕 After Tuesday's rather disappointing showing at the Treasury Select Committee's hearing on sanctions enforcement, yesterday's Foreign Affairs Committee hinted at a somewhat brighter future. 🤔 So, is there change in the offing?  👇 We take a look at where things stand in our latest article: #sanctions #enforcement

👏 Great to see MP Phil B. highlight our recent research on reinvesting some of the money generated by economic crime enforcement back into under-funded agencies like the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Serious Fraud Office (UK). 👉 Find out more about our idea for an Economic Crime Fighting Fund as explained in our “Forging a Virtuous Circle” report, written by James Bolton-Jones, on our website: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eyvjGvpX

🤔 Is the announcment of a new Anti-Corruption Champion imminent? 👇 At today's Foreign Affairs Committee, Foreign Secretary David Lammy dropped a big hint that we could get an announcement soon. 🫵 Spotlight on Corruption hopes to see a big-hitter in the role with a broad remit to coordinate a major cross-government response to corruption and illicit finance. #anticorruption #champion #illicitfinance

👓 WHAT WE'RE READING – 5 key stories from the anti-corruption world 1️⃣ The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: "SLAPPs thwarted attempts to stop Al-Fayed, says MP". Great roundup from the TBIJ team of last week's House of Commons debate on SLAPPs, featuring a clip of Joe Powell's powerful speech. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/en327Qa9 2️⃣ The Times: "Courts in crisis: ‘The chances of acquittal are higher for the rich’". A brilliant if depressing account by rachel sylvester of the problems currently afflicting the criminal justice system, part of The Times's excellent Crime and Justice Commission initiative. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eKupjQJt 3️⃣ City AM: "To tackle fraud, it’s time to start paying whistleblowers". Well-argued op-ed by Dr Alison Cronin based on her recent report calling for greater incentivisation for whistleblowers in tackling economic crime. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e6RnDYdQ 4️⃣ The Guardian: "UK imposes asset freezes and travel bans on three ‘kleptocrats’". Good round-up by Patrick Wintour and Jasper Jolly of last week's announcement of a new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office campaign to tackle corruption and illicit finance, alongside a package of anti-corruption sanctions. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eHBWSK7G 5️⃣ Tortoise Media: "The Lords’ work: what is Tortoise’s Peer Review?". Following the huge success of last year's Westminster Accounts project, Tortoise's Catherine Neilan and her team have now put the UK House of Lords under the spotlight. We recommend checking out the whole series with new stories breaking daily. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e5GWE7Zj #SLAPPs #whistleblowers #sanctions

Whistleblowers can play a huge role in combatting economic crime.     On December 10, our Director, Nicholas Ephgrave QPM, will join a panel discussion to explore the role of financial incentives for whistleblowers and look at evidence from countries that have already implemented reward programmes. This event marks the launch of Royal United Services Institute's latest research into the potential impact of financial rewards for whistleblowers. 

As Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority announce a consultation on relaxing bonus rules introduced to discourage excessive risk-taking, and following the Chancellor's announcement that the same agencies will soon be consulting on changes to the Certification Regime which was set up to provide proper checks on risk-takers in the financial sector, this important article in the Financial Times on Monday should be a warning shot. Greater deregulation for the financial sector is unlikely to be a healthy solution to the UK's growth problem, and poses many risks for the public. https://lnkd.in/eXnsqXcM

💪❓Weak enforcement has long been the Achilles’ heel of the UK’s fight against economic crime, and the early signs suggest that sanctions are no exception, with the UK’s flatline figures on sanctions enforcement underlining the need for closer scrutiny. 👀 So we closely followed today's Treasury Select Committee hearing with the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) to see what was said about plans to strengthen sanctions enforcement. Here are some key points on #enforcement that stood out for us: 🔨 More enforcement on the horizon? Giles Thomson admitted he would be “very disappointed” if OFSI had still only issued 1 fine for a post-2022 breach of Russia sanctions in a year’s time, with more “high value” cases demonstrating OFSI’s ability to tackle sophisticated sanctions breaches set to be made public in the next few months. This will be a key test of whether OFSI's new intelligence unit is successful in moving to a more proactive enforcement approach rather than relying on self-reports. Around 4️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ - the number of cases OFSI currently has open. While Thomson stressed that most of these cases will involve no further action, it is essential that at least some involve more robust enforcement action if there is to be a proper deterrent for violating sanctions. ✉️ When asked why OFSI doesn’t disclose the number of cases it refers to law enforcement for criminal investigation, OFSI's Chris Watts outlined concerns that publishing these details could encourage people to not self-report breaches, if the number of referrals at any one time was considered low. This is typical of a wider reluctance by law enforcement to disclose information about their work, making it much harder for the public to hold them to account. 🤔 OFSI's Beth Davies emphasised that OFSI is: “really focused on a proportionate approach to enforcement and working with industry to support their compliance”. While fines are only one aspect of a wider enforcement approach, if the current record of a single £15K fine for a post February 2022 sanctions breach counts as proportionate, it’s not clear what robust enforcement action from OFSI we can expect to see down the line.  👍This £15k fine was overshadowed by the FCA’s robust £29m fine issued shortly afterwards against Starling Bank for “shockingly lax” sanctions and financial crime controls. Given OFSI estimates its investigations may take 2-3 years, it was encouraging to hear that OFSI is “looking closely” at the FCA fine which followed a 14-month investigation, to explore how it can improve the efficiency of its enforcement approach. 📖 Take a look at our recent report, as well as our new database of case studies of major sanctions-related cases, to find out more about what the UK could be doing to increase sanctions enforcement: Our report 👉https://lnkd.in/eUaPPYJJ Our sanctions case database 👉https://lnkd.in/eeB8hU9Z

🚨 We’ve teamed up with MPs to help us expose shocking stories silenced by legal threats – and they’re going to be revealed in the UK parliament today. From threats to full-blown lawsuits, the disturbing trend for abusive legal action is known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs). They’ve become an increasingly popular tool for the rich and powerful to protect their reputation. That’s why we spent the past year collecting a database of stories that were blocked before they could ever be read. When we showed these to a group of MPs, they agreed to use their parliamentary privilege to reveal details of the stories today in the House of Commons. This is all part of our ongoing efforts to get the UK government to finally take action to  protect journalists and ordinary citizens alike against SLAPPs 👉 https://bit.ly/3OkRev0 #lawsuit #medialaw #SLAPPs #MPs #UKpolitics #parliament