Launched yesterday, the government’s new Anti-Money Laundering and Asset Recovery (AMLAR) Strategy commits to making it harder for criminals to move, hide and profit from their ill-gotten gains.
The scale of the challenge is immense. The National Crime Agency (NCA) assesses there is a realistic possibility over £100 billion is laundered in or through the UK or UK corporate structures every year, while new research estimates that the proceeds of crime are at least £21.9 billion. Roughly a third of these illicit profits are funnelled back into further criminality, throwing fuel on the fire while local communities suffer the consequences.
While current law enforcement efforts are just scratching the surface of this problem, the latest asset recovery statistics released last week show that system-wide prioritisation of enforcement against illicit wealth is starting to pay off:
- Recoveries are rising: £345.3 million was clawed back from criminals in 2025/26 – an annual increase of 20% – but the gap between what has been frozen and what is actually recovered remains very high.
- Grand corruption seizures are driving asset denial: more than half (£590.3 million) of the £1.1 billion frozen in 2025/26 are being badged as big-ticket corruption cases.
- Civil recovery tools are gaining traction: bank account forfeitures are growing faster than any other asset seizure tool, increasing from £65 million in 2024/25 to hit the £100 million mark in 2025/26.
- Unexplained Wealth Orders have made a striking comeback: emboldened by new cost protection, law enforcement’s use of this ‘McMafia’ tool targeted £451.5 million in 2025/26 compared to a mere £1.8 million in 2024/25.
- The reinvestment gap is glaring: despite the 20% boost in asset recovery in 2025/26, the amount recycled back into law enforcement only increased by 3% while victim compensation plummeted by 45%.
If the government wants to deliver real impact through its new AMLAR Strategy, a far greater share of recovered assets needs to be reinvested into the fight against dirty money. By creating an Economic Crime Fighting Fund to pool receipts generated through economic crime enforcement, the government can work within current constraints on the public finances to provide long-term, sustainable funding that benefits law enforcement and local communities.
Here we unpack the key drivers of increasing asset recovery and identify what would unlock system-wide capacity to scale up these efforts.
Putting annual progress into perspective
Overall asset recovery hit £345.3 million for the financial year ending March 2026, which represents a 20% rise on 2024/25. This puts asset recovery on an upward trajectory over the last three years and suggests we are starting to reap the rewards of increased investment and a stronger system-wide focus on tackling economic crime.
While this represents welcome progress in the short-term, these results only bring us back to previous highs achieved in 2021/22 and 2022/23 when asset recovery was peaking around £350 million. A similar pattern is reflected in the data on asset denial – which involves seizing or restraining assets as a stepping stone to their ultimate recovery. This has reached £1.1 billion in 2025/26 – a 30% increase on the previous year – but still has not matched the record-breaking £1.9 billion denied in 2021/22.
This bears out our analysis at the end of 2025 that asset recovery gains over the longer-term have been gradual, interspersed by a few bumper years resulting from one-off high-value cases. This is not enough to keep pace with the fast-evolving illicit finance threat, let alone deliver the step change needed to make a real dent in the UK’s £100 billion dirty money problem.
Confiscation dips but high-value restraint orders rise
It is only by looking beyond the headline statistics, however, that we get an insight into where the system is doing well, and where the barriers lie.
Criminal confiscation has traditionally been the primary route for recovering the proceeds of crime. But in 2025/26, confiscation receipts actually dipped by 5% despite the overall increase in asset recovery, with the result that the £150.9 million recovered through confiscation during 2025/26 accounts for only 44% of overall recoveries. This no doubt reflects broader challenges progressing prosecutions through the court system, and complex money laundering cases in particular.
Given the severe delays in the criminal justice system, it is essential that prosecutors act quickly to stop assets being dissipated while defendants wait for trial. While the number of restraint orders has remained pretty static over the years, the latest data for 2025/26 shows their overall value increased by 37% on the previous year. Even more encouraging is that this surge is due to a 51% rise in high-value restraint orders, which accounted for £484 million out of the £677 million restrained in 2025/26.
The exponential growth of bank account forfeitures
But the real progress across the system is being driven by non-conviction-based recovery.
Since their introduction in 2017, Account Freezing Orders (AFOs) have fast become the tool of choice for law enforcement. With an investigation often triggered by a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR), an AFO can be granted by a magistrates’ court and provides a swift way to freeze funds held in a bank account.
Both the volume and value of these orders are growing faster than any other asset seizure tool. In 2025/26, AFOs accounted for 74% (£221.7 million) of the £376.4 million blocked across all civil seizures.
The latest figures also show an improvement in ensuring frozen funds are then permanently recovered. Money forfeited from bank accounts reached £100.4 million in 2025/26, a huge spike from the £65 million in 2024/25 and consolidating the consistent year-on-year gains since this tool was introduced in 2017.
Unexplained Wealth Orders and civil recovery surge following new costs protection
The most eye-catching increases, however, relate to dirty money cases unfolding in the High Courts.
This is largely due to Unexplained Wealth Orders making a striking comeback. Early efforts to use this ‘McMafia’ tool were few and far between, and left law enforcement crippled by legal bills when they lost against wealthy targets. But the introduction in 2022 of cost protection for UWO cases has emboldened law enforcement to pursue deep-pocketed suspects.
The results speak for themselves. In 2024/25, a mere £1.8 million was investigated under UWOs but this has surged to £451.5 million in 2025/26. A number of these cases relate to assets – from luxury London properties to Jurassic dinosaur skeletons – bought with suspected proceeds of a major money laundering operation in Singapore.
Because UWOs are an investigative tool, merely requiring the target to explain how they acquired particular property, they are often accompanied by an Interim Freezing Order (IFO) which ensures the property cannot be sold while investigations are underway. For the first time, the asset recovery statistical bulletin provides data on freezing orders granted in High Court proceedings, revealing that £431.7 million was frozen through IFOs in 2025/26 – after a drought year in 2024/25 when no funds were targeted through IFOs.
Property Freezing Orders in the High Court have similarly seen an uptick, rising from £52.2 million in 2024/25 to £182.7 million in 2025/26. And the pipeline is similarly growing in progressing these freezing orders to permanent recoveries, with the value of Civil Recovery Orders (CROs) jumping from £7.5 million to £38.5 million over the last two years.
Earlier this year, new cost protections were rolled out for law enforcement across all civil recovery proceedings, not just UWOs, so this should be a real turning point in ambition to pursue complex money laundering investigations.
Record-breaking grand corruption seizures
One of the most valuable features of the annual statistical return is its disaggregated data on the proceeds of grand corruption. The latest figures suggest it is these investigations into corrupt elites that are driving the most striking trends in civil recovery proceedings noted above.
This is most clearly illustrated by the fact that the proceeds of grand corruption account for more than half (£590.3 million) of the total £1.1 billion denied in 2025/26. The vast majority (£526.1 million) was frozen using civil tools, while the remaining £64.2 million in proceeds of grand corruption was restrained as part of criminal proceedings.
This is a vast improvement on 2024/25, when a mere £2.3 million was denied through civil routes, and £33.6 million through criminal restraint. More importantly, it far outstrips the proceeds of grand corruption denied in previous years.
It would be premature, however, to chalk these cases up as major successes. The real test lies in whether these frozen assets will be converted into permanent recoveries. Here the data for 2025/26 is less impressive, with only £2.6 million permanently recovered using civil tools (almost entirely through bank account forfeitures) and £0.8 million through criminal confiscation.
Complex corruption cases can take a long time to progress through the courts, but we will be closely following these proceedings as they unfold to scrutinise how effectively and transparently these assets are being pursued. This includes ensuring that investigations characterised as grand corruption cases are in fact targeting illicit wealth resulting from the abuse of public trust by senior public officials.
Victims are seeing little return
Despite the impressive increase in grand corruption investigations that appear to be in the pipeline, no recovered funds have been returned to prior legitimate owners or used to compensate victims of corruption. For the second year in a row, the figure for international asset returns is zero. While a £101.5 million confiscation order against the former Nigerian governor James Ibori is still subject to an appeal more than a decade after his conviction, it is hoped that the UK government will seek to expedite this return as soon as proceedings are wrapped up.
Looking beyond the victims of corruption, the latest stats reveal that victim compensation across the board plummeted by 45% last year (£26.1 million) although this follows an exceptionally strong performance in 2024/25 when £47.2 million was paid out to victims. Nevertheless, the six-year median of £20.6 million shows that victims are receiving the crumbs that fall from the table when proceeds of crime are confiscated, and compensation is largely limited to fraud cases (68%).
Reinvestment in law enforcement has not increased in step with asset recovery
Law enforcement agencies have also seen little benefit from increased asset recovery, with only £129.6 million recycled back into the system through the Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme (ARIS) in 2025/26. This represents a mere 3% increase on 2024/25, despite a 20% increase in the assets recovered over that period.
Meanwhile £12.8 million from the ARIS ‘Top Slice’ – which has had the same annual budget of £13.9 million since 2022 – was used to support 18 innovative asset recovery projects during 2025/26, from improving confiscation enforcement by Regional Organised Crime Units to enhancing cryptocurrency capability at the Serious Fraud Office.
While based on a sound principle of reinvestment, ARIS is deeply flawed in how it operates – particularly Treasury’s ‘use it or lose it’ annularity rules which require allocations to be spent in the same year they are received. Our research has found that, in practice, the Treasury retains the vast majority of funds generated through economic crime enforcement (particularly when financial penalties are included alongside asset recovery).
In stark contrast to the stagnating figures on reinvestment through ARIS, the Economic Crime Levy (ECL) raised from regulated firms in the private sector has more than doubled from just under £100 million to £225 million a year. Yet the annularity of ECL budgets generates similar problems of short-term, precarious funding for law enforcement. In fact, £13.9 million – the equivalent of the entire ARIS Top Slice – that was raised by the ECL but not spent in 2024/25, was instead absorbed back into the Consolidated Fund for general government spending.
Optimising reinvestment through an Economic Crime Fighting Fund
While the ECL brings a significant boost to funding, it does not provide the sustainable, long-term resourcing needed to support core budgets. As the government launches its new AMLAR Strategy, there is an urgent need to ensure its ambitions to ramp up asset recovery are backed by multi-year resourcing to deliver real results.
The latest asset recovery trends point to the solution by showing how greater investment pays off through greater returns. By creating an Economic Crime Fighting Fund that pools all receipts generated by economic crime enforcement – including asset recovery and fines – the government can work within current constraints on the public finances to provide the long-term, sustainable funding that agencies need to achieve a step change in tackling dirty money.
This would turbocharge system-wide enforcement efforts while also turning the criminal business model on its head – not just taking the profit out of crime, but putting criminals first in line to pay for the fight against dirty money.
