Effective information sharing between and within the public and private sectors is crucial for stopping economic crime. But all too often, legal and cultural barriers prevent key information from going to the right place at the right time, leaving criminals free to launder money while law enforcement agencies play catch up with limited information.
The UK Home Office is seeking to address these problems 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.
Our submission focused on:
- Strengthening the effectiveness of the suspicious activity reporting (SAR) regime to deliver high-value intelligence that is crucial for the UK’s defences against illicit finance.
- The importance of ensuring legal privilege is not misapplied or abused to prevent the sharing of information or reporting of suspicious activity, and ensuring regulators can access privileged material for purposes of investigating potential AML breaches by lawyers
- The opportunity to strengthen the integrity of UK politics against illicit finance by enabling better information sharing with the Electoral Commission.
- The urgent need for a broad legal gateway for economic crime information sharing to allow supervisors to share relevant and useful information with relevant authorities that is not directly obtained through their supervisory functions.
- Proposals to enhance cross-border information sharing by:
– Scoping the benefits of harmonising SAR reporting with the EU and other jurisdictions through the UK’s Presidency of the Financial Action Task Force.
– Establishing a mechanism to track and promote accountability for responding to Mutual Legal Assistance requests.
– Exploring opportunities to establish an international network for cross-border information-sharing among AML regulators.
