The United Kingdom government has unveiled its new anti-corruption strategy 2025, designed to “drive dirty money out of the UK.” This comes a day after the government announced that the country would be hosting a summit next year to combat global illicit finance, including cracking down on the illegal use of digital assets to evade international sanctions.
“Launching today, the new strategy sets out how the UK will shut out corrupt actors, disrupt dirty money and restore integrity in public life,” said the government. “It targets corrupt networks at home and abroad to strengthen national security while driving growth.”
In terms of specifics, the strategy will step up action to root out corruption in the U.K. through a major expansion of the Domestic Corruption Unit (DCU), including £15 million ($19.9 million) in new funding and specialist officers taking up more investigations, to support local forces to detect and disrupt bribery and money laundering networks nationwide.
So-called “professional enablers”—the corrupt lawyers, accountants, and bankers who help dirty money flow—will also be a major target, with a plan to expand the use of sanctions and scale up the capability and coordination of the National Crime Agency (NCA), the U.K.’s lead anti-organized crime agency.
These new measures form just a part of the government’s landmark anti-corruption strategy 2025, which contains over one hundred commitments across government and law enforcement to tackle the threat of corruption to the U.K., by “bringing corrupt actors to justice, growing the economy and shutting illicit finance out of the country.”
The NCA estimates that over £100 billion ($133 billion) may be laundered through the U.K. annually. According to the government, U.K. businesses faced 117,000 bribe offers domestically in the past year, worth over £300 million ($399 million).
While the anti-corruption strategy didn’t single out digital assets, it came hot on the heels of the U.K. Foreign Office announcement that the country would be hosting a major international summit next summer to tackle the flows of dirty money around the world, in which the illicit use of cryptocurrencies was highlighted.
“As the Government publishes its landmark Anti-Corruption Strategy tomorrow, I am kick-starting preparations for the Summit and putting the corrupt on notice: the UK is ready to shut you down,” Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said. “The Summit will agree tough international action on three means through which dirty money is moved: illicit gold, which is financing Russia’s war in Ukraine; property, used by criminals and kleptocrats to hide cash; and crypto-assets, increasingly exploited by people smugglers to stash away their profits.”
Echoing these sentiments, Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary David Lammy said that, with the anti-corruption strategy and next summer’s summit, the U.K. hopes to “lead internationally, bringing partners together to close the gaps exploited by kleptocrats and organised criminals.”
“Corruption bleeds countries dry, fuels conflict like Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine, and spreads across borders like a stain,” he added. “We are boosting enforcement, rooting out the minority of corrupt actors in our public forces and reforming our courts to tackle complex economic crime.”
Despite increased scrutiny of the finance space, the UK government emphasized that the new regime is intended to identify corruption and promote fair competition, ultimately helping—not hampering—the country to attract investment and drive growth.
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Source: https://coingeek.com/uk-sets-stricter-anti-corruption-strategy-for-digital-assets/
