Earlier this week in an article about Anti Money-Laundering risk in the property sector I broke down the figures from the National Crime Agency’s Financial Investigation Unit (NCA) (FIU) report into Suspicious Activity Reports and Defence Against Money-Laundering (DAML) requests for the period 2018/19.

In highlighting that £55m of the £131m restrained/seized/frozen by UK law enforcement after DAML requests had come as a result of Account Freezing Orders (AFOs), I commented:

‘The FIU report is the first one where the provisions of the Criminal Finances Act 2017 have had a significant impact on the headline figures’.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the UK’s primary conduct regulator for the financial services sector and derives its regulatory and enforcement powers from the Financial Services & Markets Act 2000. Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Etheurem, exist only electronically and use a peer-to-peer system supported by blockchain technology for onward transfer.

The National Crime Agency’s Financial Investigation Unit (FIU) report in to Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) and Defence Against Money-Laundering (DAML) requests for the period 2018/19 was published recently. It makes for fascinating reading, especially coming so soon after the Transparency International Report (TI) setting out the influx of £4bn in ‘suspect’ funds into the UK.

The FIU report is the first one where the provisions of the Criminal Finances Act 2017 have had a significant impact on the headline figures.

“Shining a light through the CLOUD: Facebook’s end to end encryption announcement is a direct challenge to US CLOUD Act and UK Crime Overseas Production Orders Act 2019”

The news that Facebook announced this morning should surprise no one in its timing. The announcement, that Facebook are looking to provide end to end encryption for communications between its users, comes just when law enforcement in the US and UK are on the cusp of a significant enhancement of their data gathering capability.