1 ESTABLISHING THE AGENCY
1. The Assets Recovery Agency (the Agency) was set
up in February 2003, under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, to
extend the limited provisions for criminal confiscation. The Agency
had new, unique powers of civil recovery, to recover assets from
the proceeds of crime, even when the owners had not been convicted
of a criminal offence. The Agency could also use criminal confiscation
to recover assets from convicted criminals and prepare taxation
estimates for criminal income, gain or profits. Prior to the inception
of the Agency, there was no single, individual organisation tasked
with recovering criminal assets. The Agency therefore invested
much effort in its first four years of operation in establishing
and defending the use of the new powers through the courts. The
Agency had recovered criminal assets to the value of £23
million. The Agency's assets recovery functions are expected to
be merged with the Serious Organised Crime Agency from April 2008
and its financial investigation training functions will be merged
with the new National Policing Improvement Agency. This merger
will extend the Serious Organised Crime Agency's existing powers
to recover assets through criminal confiscation, to include civil
recovery and taxation and increase its existing caseload by some
500 cases.[2]
2. The Home Office set up an implementation team
to assist in the establishment of the Agency so that it could
operate as soon as the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 became law.
Insufficient preparatory work was carried out, however, with no
feasibility study or business case setting out what the Home Office
expected to be achieved, resulting in delivery expectations which
proved unrealistic. The Agency assumed, for example, that the
cases it pursued would take the same length of time to progress
as civil cases. In practice, however, cases have taken twice as
long on average, partly due to the additional requirement to set
legal precedents.[3]
3. The Agency was dealing with novel legislation
introduced under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and it was always
intended that there would be feedback to allow the legislation
to be amended in the light of experience to enable efficient recovery
of assets. Although there have been a few examples of this approach
working effectively, it can still take two years or more for the
Agency to review specific issues, and then for the Home Office
and the Ministry of Justice to propose amendments to the legislation,
Figure 1. So the changes indicated by the feedback are
not getting implemented quickly enough.[4]
Figure 1: Timeline showing the setting
up of the Agency and amendments to the legislation
Source: National Audit Office and Committee hearing
2 Qq 14, 32, 34, 37, 49-50; C&AG's Report, Figure
4, paras 1.1-2; C&AG's Report, Figure 11 Back
3
Qq 5, 7-9, 15-21, 80-81 Back
4
Qq 6, 14, 48, 83-5, 88-92, 97; C&AG's Report paras 3.5,3.14-15;
Ev 30 Back
|
