NCIS Unveils UK's Money Laundering Reporting Figures

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

13 January 2005

According to preliminary figures for 2004 recently released by the UK's National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), around 135,368 reports had been made to it in the year to November under the auspices of the UK's anti-money laundering laws.

The NCIS estimated that the total figure, including December's data, is likely to be in the region of 150,000, with solicitors accounting for nearly 9% of all reports made.

Of the reports made by solicitors, the majority are requests for consent to act, the Service figures revealed, although suspicious activity reports accounted for more than 1,000 of the 13,200 reports made by this group.

Speaking to the Law Society's Law Gazette, Robin Booth, who heads the Society's money laundering task force, drew attention to the lower number of money laundering reports lodged by lawyers in other EU member states last year (eight in Germany, and less than 50 in France). He then suggested that the legal sector in the UK is shouldering an unreasonable reporting burden in this area, observing that:

"The issue is whether the regime is proportional."

Recommended