- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Ruth Prickett2024-06-06T13:52:00
Despite repeated interventions, fines, and negative publicity, money laundering is rife in U.K. financial services firms, according to Deputy Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell.
Mitchell made headlines last month for telling think tank Bright Blue that “40 percent of money laundering around the world … comes through London and overseas territories and crown dependencies.”
In April, Mitchell committed to tackling illicit flows of money by forcing companies to be transparent about their ownership.
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Recent events have put a spotlight on the role of the U.K. Gambling Commission, following its investigation into privileged information allegedly being used to bet on the date of the U.K. general election.
The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority warned the chief executive officers of approximately 1,000 financial institutions it supervises regarding common failures in anti-money laundering procedures it observed during recent assessments.
The success of the U.K.’s latest legislative efforts to tackle financial crime depends on the capability of transforming what is often regarded as one of the country’s most passive regulators into a proactive—even aggressive—prosecuting authority.
London has long had the dubious reputation of being the world’s money laundering capital and it looks like it’s a title it is likely to retain for some time yet.
The U.K. will struggle to shed its reputation as one of the world’s biggest conduits for dirty money due to a combination of patchy intelligence-sharing and poorly resourced enforcement agencies, experts told Compliance Week.
The U.K. has an ongoing problem with money laundering, but recent changes to economic crime law and corporate registration requirements could bring more cases to court, according to consultancy KPMG.
