Jonathan Ashworth – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jonathan Ashworth on 2016-06-14.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what processes are in place for strengthening partnerships between law enforcement agencies in the UK and elsewhere in order to tackle international corruption.
Matthew Hancock
UK law enforcement agencies already have strong collaborative partnerships with many overseas authorities which are valuable in supporting and developing their investigations into international corruption. The London Anti-Corruption Summit in May galvanised further efforts to improve international cooperation.
At the Summit, the PM announced that the UK will host a new International Anti-Corruption Coordination Centre (IACCC) to help law enforcement investigators work together effectively across multiple jurisdictions, ending the impunity often associated with grand corruption. We are working with international partners towards making the IACCC operational by April 2017.
The UK also committed to supporting the creation of a Centre of Excellence for Financial Intelligence Units to support the sharing of information with other countries. This will help to improve the effectiveness of the international response to international money-laundering. We are also working with other countries to establish a Global Forum for Asset Recovery.
Initiatives to enhance transparency over beneficial ownership information will also support international law enforcement cooperation in tackling international corruption. This includes the initiative on the automatic exchange of beneficial ownership information between jurisdictions, as well as the UK’s new public register of persons of significant control, (which goes live this month) and the agreements reached with relevant Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies to grant UK law enforcement access to beneficial ownership information there.
