Written statement by Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Today I am confirming the allocation of £300million between
2023/24-2025/26 generated from the Economic Crime (Anti-Money
Laundering) Levy. Announced at Budget 2020 the levy was
legislated for in the 2022 Finance Act. The levy supplements
approximately £200 million of additional government investment to
tackle economic crime over the 2021 Spending Review period.
The Levy funding has been allocated to deliver benefits to the
entire anti-money laundering system across both the public and
private sector and will underpin the priorities set out in the
next three-year, public-private Economic Crime Plan.
Over the next three years the Levy has been allocated to:
- Invest over £100 million in state of the art technology which
will analyse and share data on threats in real time, to give law
enforcement the tools it needs to stay ahead of criminals.
- Provide funding for more skilled financial crime
investigators. This includes funding to hire 475 new
investigators and Economic Crime training for more than 6500
existing investigators in the National Crime Agency and across
national and regional intelligence, investigation and prosecution
agencies. New and better trained officers will lead to more cases
investigated, more criminals prosecuted, and more assets
recovered.
- A further £60 million will fund new specialist intelligence
teams in the National Crime Agency and expand the Combatting
Kleptocracy Cell in order to tackle the most complex global money
laundering networks.
- Funding for c.75 officers to sustain the increased staffing
of the UK Financial Intelligence Unit and provide funding for 22
new financial investigators to analyse Suspicious Activity
Reports embedded in regional organised crime units. The
Suspicious Activity Reporting regime is a key pillar of the UK’s
Anti-Money Laundering (AML) system and is a critical tool for law
enforcement to identify and disrupt money launderers.
- Invest £20 million in Companies House and the Insolvency
Service to fund the creation of two new intelligence teams. These
new teams will improve our understanding of how UK companies are
misused to launder the proceeds of crime and help put a stop to
it. Further £600,000 funding has been allocated for the
deployment of UK experts overseas to raise the global standards
on Beneficial Ownership multiplying the impact of our domestic
reforms to Companies House.
- £1.2 million for a dedicated surge team to accelerate the
fundamental reform of the AML supervisory supervision regime,
leading to more effective risk-based supervision, more dissuasive
enforcement, and greater sharing of high-value information and
intelligence.
Recognising the importance of accountability and in line with the
principle of transparency, this announcement made on 27th March
will be followed in 2024 by the publication of an annual report
on the operation of the levy. A more wide-ranging review of the
levy will be undertaken by the end of 2027. These reports will be
laid before Parliament.
