More money and more investigators have been promised by the UK Government under its Anti-Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Strategy.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “We are putting 500 more officers on the trail of dirty money, going after the criminal bosses behind organised crime and stripping them of the funds they use to fuel drug trafficking, people smuggling and other serious crime. By going after the profits of Britainโs biggest gangs, we will break their grip on our communities, put the money back in victimsโ pockets and ensure crime does not pay.”
The Home Office pointed also to the High Street Organised Crime Unit, announced in the summer, to go after such premises as vape and barber shops that are in fact fronts for organised crime and laundering of criminal profits. For the 100-page document visit the Home Office website. The document proposes that the authorities concentrate on ‘highest harm risks’, and singles out ‘cash-based money laundering’.
The document describes money laundering as ‘a cross-system challenge that depends on effective public private collaboration to deliver a coordinated and impactful response’. The National Crime Agency (NCA) assesses that at least ยฃ1 billion is now being laundered per year through businesses operating on UK high streets such as nail bars and vape stores. The document expects ‘thousands more premises visited’. The strategy noted ‘increasing use by Organised Criminal Groups (OCGs) of the Post Officeโs everyday banking facilities to deposit large volumes of criminal cash across the UK, with cash deposits continuing to rise despite the broader societal shift away from cash.’ The document suggests the possibility in post offices of ‘targeted customer identification requirements, introduction of CCTV and potential further limits on cards or deposits’.
Comment
Ed Woodall, Chief Executive of the trade body the Association of Convenience Stores said: โDodgy shops that act as a front for organised crime have no place on our high streets. More enforcement action against criminal assets will help shut down these operations, disrupt the networks behind them, and make it harder for criminals to profit from exploiting local communities.โ
Legit high street framework approach
Meanwhile the criminologist Prof Emmeline Taylor โ who has worked with the Co-op Group on crime against retail workers โ in a paper, titled Legitimate High Street Framework, has called for more to be done about counterfeit tobacco products. She said: โBritainโs high streets are the lifeblood of communities. However, we can see that crime is not simply a consequence of high street decline, it is now one of its principle drivers. Illicit tobacco, retail theft and the stolen goods market not only generate victims, but they also distort local economies, undermine legitimate commerce, erode public confidence, and weaken the opportunities for successful regeneration.
โThe proposed Legitimate High Street Framework is a criminology-informed approach to providing a coherent framework for protecting lawful enterprise, disrupting organised crime and restoring confidence. If Britainโs high streets are to experience the renaissance envisaged under Andy Burnhamโs policy platform, tackling crime must be recognised as a prerequisite for renaissance, not simply a parallel objective.โ
The Co-op made FoI (Freedom of Information Act) requests to find that when local councils do visit suspect shops, they find illegal cigarettes 43 per cent of the time, confiscating an average of 8,000 illegal cigarettes per seizure. But, the retailer complains, the number of raids are limited, and while closure notices and orders provide local councils and trading standards with powers, they are not being used. The Co-op points also to the limited use of the Tobacco Track and Trace (TT&T) system, which enables all tobacco products in the UK to be tracked through the legitimate supply chain to the retailer.
