Asset Recovery Tracker

This section tracks the amount of criminal assets or ‘dirty money’ which law enforcement has recovered since 2013/14 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Annual asset recovery through different tools

The UK has a range of legal mechanisms to recover criminal assets –  including corrupt assets coming into the UK that have been stolen by corrupt elites – from confiscation and forfeiture orders to civil recovery. This chart shows annual recoveries through each mechanism from 2013/14 to 2023/24, providing insight into which tools are most frequently deployed by UK authorities. Examining these trends helps assess the effectiveness of the UK’s asset recovery framework and its evolution over time.

International Asset Return: Recovering Proceeds of Grand Corruption

Corruption causes enormous harm. It damages trust in public institutions and governance, causes significant losses to the public purse, and distorts public spending priorities. Yet the detailed harm caused by specific corrupt acts is rarely elaborated in court trials or put to juries in corruption cases. Those who are harmed most by corruption – often the poorest in affected countries – rarely receive any compensation or direct benefit from successful enforcement actions.

This visualisation tracks the total value of assets recovered from grand corruption cases that have been returned to victim countries. The data distinguishes between recovery mechanisms, highlighting the UK’s use of different legal frameworks to address cross-border corruption. These figures represent a key indicator of how effectively the UK is fulfilling its obligations to combat kleptocracy and return stolen assets.

Explore the rest of the data:

• Anti-Corruption Enforcement Tracker home page →
• Money Laundering Tracker →
• Fraud Tracker →
• Bribery Tracker →

For more information, please see the methodology section.