The UK, as a major financial centre, and its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, have long been attractive destinations for laundering dirty money. While there is no official figure for how much money is laundered through the UK, the National Crime Agency found that there was a “realistic possibility that the scale of money laundering impacting the UK is in the hundreds of billions of pounds annually”.
We track whether the UK’s laws designed to deter the laundering of corrupt money and confiscate the proceeds of corruption are working. We focus on:
Companies House’s long overdue crackdown on individuals that have failed to verify their identities has begun, with a flurry of warning letters (equivalent to almost one-fifth of all companies registered), but strong enforcement must follow to remove the UK’s corporate registry from kleptocrats’ and fraudsters’ toolkits.
New data on key corruption and economic crime offences in Spotlight’s enforcement tracker has revealed big increases in prosecutions across the board in 2024-25. But looking beyond the headline numbers, what story does this data really tell us about the state of anti-corruption enforcement in England and Wales?
Asset recovery – the process of tracing, freezing, seizing, managing, preserving, disposing, and returning the proceeds of crime and corruption or compensating victims of crime – lies at the heart...
The UK Home Office is seeking to address problems relating to information sharing between and within the public and private sectors to stop financial crime. Through a call for evidence that closed in May 2026, Spotlight on Corruption submitted evidence drawn from our research and unique court monitoring programme on how information could be shared more effectively to tackle economic crime.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Illicit Finance Summit delay should be used to launch bold UK leadership against dirty money The delay to the UK’s Illicit Finance Summit should now be used...
For more information, please contact:fwood@burness.com FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 28 April 2026 Ahead of the UK-hosted Illicit Finance Summit – a groundbreaking opportunity to tackle ‘tainted gold’ flowing through the global...
Gold is no longer simply a financial asset or commodity. It has become a strategic vehicle for organised crime, sanctions evasion, corruption, and political control. Its high value and ease...
The government’s plan to raise the bar for including consultation requirements in legislation is a risky move that could threaten public trust in politics.
