Our in-depth research and reports help build consensus for making the laws work

On 17 February 2022, the Home Office scrapped the UK’s Tier 1 Investor visa route (‘golden visas’) without formal notice and with immediate effect. This decision is welcome - last year, Spotlight on Corruption published research which revealed serious concerns with ongoing loopholes that left the visa route vulnerable to dirty money. While we support the government’s decision to scrap the route, we urge the government to go further and take the following steps. 1. The Home Office must be fully...

Read the full report here Read the Executive Summary here Economic crime – which includes corruption, bribery, money laundering and fraud - poses a major risk to the UK’s national security, corrupts financial institutions and markets, reduces economic performance and undermines the integrity and reputation of the UK and its economy as a safe place to do business. Despite high-level commitments from ministers to deliver a step change in tackling economic crime and increase the number of assets...

In light of the depth of concern at the government’s handling of conflict of interest issues, the new procurement policy note represents a useful clarification of the existing rules and policy frameworks. Disappointingly, it only introduces minor changes that fall far short of what is needed to fix what is clearly a broken system.

Account Freezing Orders (AFO) were introduced in the UK in the 2017 Criminal Finances Act, alongside Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs), as a new measure designed to tackle illicit finance. While receiving far less attention than their glitzy sister order, AFOs are emerging as the preferred tool for law enforcement to freeze and recover corrupt assets in a relatively straightforward and cost-effective way.

UK needs much stronger rules to prevent new chumocracy scandals. Post-Brexit procurement reform is an opportunity to create a tough national strategy drawing on best practice from US & Canada.

28 January 2021

Parliamentary briefing on adding an ammendment to the Financial Services Bill to create a new corporate criminal offence for facilitating or failing to prevent economic crime

Spotlight on Corruption is today releasing a major new report on the role of UK Export Finance (UKEF) in fighting corruption in the UK’s post-Brexit and post-coronavirus trade drive. UKEF is a government agency that provides taxpayer support to underwrite the majority of financial risk that UK companies face when exporting abroad. UKEF is being called upon to play an enhanced role in the government’s trade drive. In particular, UKEF’s ability to make direct loans to foreign governments and...