SAR news 24/12/2009 Lords call for probe on link between money laundering and terrorism

A House of Lords committee has called on the Government to investigate the link between money laundering, piracy and the financing of terrorism.

Chairman of the House of Lords EU Sub-Committee on Home Affairs, Lord Jopling said although much had been done to fight money laundering, it wanted the link between ransoms paid to pirates and terrorists to be probed and suggested there should be greater co-operation with other EU states to increase the confiscation of the proceeds of crime.

In a report, the committee suggests ship owners preparing to pay ransoms to pirates should seek permission and advise the authorities about details of recipients.

The committee points out that the fight against money laundering depends on banks and others providing reports of suspicious activities to the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). With 200,000 entries being made on its electronic suspicious activity reports (SAR) database, known as ELMER, each year, and there are now 1.5 million entries.

Even where there is no evidence that the suspicious activity was criminal, the vast majority are kept for 10 years even where there is no evidence that the suspicious activity was criminal and the committee says that the Information Commissioner must investigate this.

Lord Jopling concludes, We are concerned that the Government has been slow to adopt measures to speed the exchange of information. The Government should act now to ratify the Warsaw Convention on Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing.

Monitoring suspicious movements of money and suspicious account activity can only work with cooperation from banks and financial institutions. They are not being provided with enough feedback on the impact of their reports of suspicious activities.

SOCA should provide them with more information on how their work helps to prevent money laundering and terrorist funding. But the Information Commissioner must examine the database on which all this information is kept.

News « SOCA news - Lords committee reports on money laundering action

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