It is widely thought that proceedings under the Proceeds of ‘Crime’ Act, such as confiscation, are intended to obtain the money someone makes from committing a crime. So, the thinking goes, if a person is convicted of fraud having made £100,000 from the crime, then those funds can be confiscated by the courts. While this basic premise is correct, UK money laundering laws are far broader in their application and are increasingly being used by…

Speaking on 4 April 2019, the head of enforcement for the UK FCA, Mark Steward, warned those subject to the UK’s anti-money laundering regulations that ‘it is time that the FCA gave effect to the full intention of the Money-Laundering Regulations which provides for criminal prosecutions’. He added: ‘[The FCA is] now conducting ‘dual track’ AML investigations, i.e., investigations into suspected breaches of the Money-Laundering Regulations that might give rise to either criminal or civil…

Figures provided by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) show that in spite of the thousands of tip-offs on insider dealing it receives from banks and other financial services firms, it rarely opens an investigation. In a response to a freedom of information (FOI) request made by Greenberg Traurig’s White Collar Defence and Special Investigations Practice, the FCA confirmed that as of 4 March 2019 it had opened 61 investigations into insider dealing since…

In 2018 the House of Lords announced it would set up an ad hoc Select Committee to conduct a post-legislative review of the Bribery Act 2010. Greenberg Traurig Shareholder Anne-Marie Ottaway was appointed Specialist Advisor to the Committee, which today published the report of its findings. The review confirms that the Bribery Act 2010 is “an exemplary piece of legislation” which sets the global benchmark for anti-bribery and corruption legislation. The Bribery Act was…

In a February 2019 speech, the FCA’s Director of Market Oversight, Julia Hoggett, said the following: The life blood of all well-functioning markets is the timely dissemination of information, without which effective price information cannot take place. The malignant form of that same life blood is the misuse or inappropriate dissemination of that information. The ‘malignant form’ to which Ms Hoggett referred is insider dealing, where someone trades on the basis of information not known…

Lisa Osofsky, the new director of the UK Serious Fraud Office, says her agency should use insiders and co-operators to bring to life by way of live evidence the document-heavy cases it prosecutes. Speaking to the Commons Justice Committee in December 2018, Ms Osofsky alluded to the slow pace of SFO investigations as one of the agency’s key criticisms and suggested that getting an ‘insider’ to help the SFO understand what was going on could…