Helen Goodman – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Helen Goodman on 2016-01-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) arrests and (b) convictions for laundering money there were from which countries in each year between 2010 and 2015.

Mike Penning

The Government is committed to ensuring that the UK has a robust anti-money laundering regime. The National Risk Assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing was published on 15 October 2015. This identified the threats and vulnerabilities we face in these areas, and an action plan will be published shortly, setting out the steps that we will take to address them.

To lead our law enforcement response to this threat, in 2013 the Government created the Economic Crime Command (ECC) of the National Crime Agency (NCA). The ECC has established a new International Corruption Unit in the NCA to provide a single centre of excellence in this field.

The Home Office collects data on arrests at offence group level, which includes groups such as ‘fraud and forgery’ and ‘theft and handling stolen goods’. Details on arrests for specific offences are not centrally collected.

The number of people prosecuted, convicted and given a custodial sentence for money laundering offences, in England and Wales, from 2004 to 2014 (the latest data available), can be viewed on the Ministry of Justice website at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-december-2014

Under “Criminal justice statistics outcomes by offence data tool” by selecting the offence: 38 Money laundering. The Ministry of Justice is unable to identify from centrally held data the country of origin of a defendant convicted of a money laundering offence or the country where the money originated from.