New finance laws in UK

Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#UnitedKingdom, November 11, 2023 – A new law has been passed in the United Kingdom in an attempt to give police more power to tackle money laundering and cybercrime even using crypto.  The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill got Royal assent on October 26 making it law.

It provides:

• additional powers to seize and recover suspected criminal crypto assets even without a criminal conviction.
• reforms to give businesses more confidence to share information in order to tackle money laundering and other economic crime.
• new intelligence gathering powers for law enforcement.

In addition,  the bill is intended to introduce identity verification for all company directors and people with significant control in companies. The UK will also increase transparency requirements. The National Crime Agency’s Financial Intelligence Unit’s (FIU) can now get information from businesses without filing reports of suspicious activity.

If large companies profit from fraud commuted by their employees they can be hit with a new offense, failure to prevent fraud.

The UK cited its large and open economy which was at risk for fraud as the reason behind the new laws.