Economic crime plan 2023 to 2026

The UK government has published its Economic Crime Plan 2 which builds upon the first plan issued in 2019 and covers the period 2023 through 2026. Therein, the government sets out (regulatory) measures it intends to take within the next three years to reach the following key objectives – as quoted:
1. reducing money laundering and recovering more criminal assets
2. combatting kleptocracy and driving down sanctions evasion
3. cutting fraud
Figure 1: Overview of the UK government’s key and subsidiary objectives

Some of these measures are briefly noted below; for further detailed information, please consult the crime plan itself.
##### Envisioned measures to reach the above noted objectives
– Bringing forward new regulation to enhance the current supervisory regime;
– Setting out a new strategy to identify and target financial crime that is related to ESG issues;
– Exploring new technology to aid the detection of financial crimes;
– Strengthening oversight over supervised entities by engaging with firms to enhance their risk awareness of AML and CFT matters and by strengthening collaboration between law enforcement and regulators;
– Establishing multi-agency workgroups that work together on cross-sectoral issues such as crypto-assets;
– Reforming the current suspicous activity reporting (SAR) framework with the aim to enhance analytical possibilities to enable faster responses and examinations;
– Creating an international „intelligence exchange hub“ to support cross-border asset recovery;
– Developing performance metrics, including performance indicators, and action plans with respect to all three noted objectives and frequently measure and review supvervisory actions against those indicators.
—————
The government has also appended an annex in which it presents the latest economic crime data, ranging from the number of SARs that were filed during the past five years, to the value of the assets that were recovered by law enforcement during the same time period.