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MPs critical of Assets Recovery Agency

12/10/2007

A government agency created four years ago to seize criminal assets has failed to make a positive impact, an influential committee of MPs has said.

The House of Commons public accounts committee (PAC) said the Assets Recovery Agency had made unsatisfactory progress since being set up four years ago under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

The agency was granted new and unique civil recovery powers that allowed proceeds of crime assets to be seized even if their owner had not been convicted of a crime.

Last year it emerged that the agency had recovered assets worth £23 million, compared to its expenditure of £65 million.

And the government has already confirmed that the Assets Recovery Agency is to be disbanded and its powers and cases transferred to the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) from April 2008 onwards.

PAC chairman Edward Leigh acknowledged today that the agency had done a "good job" in testing its new powers through the courts and that Soca stood to benefit as a result.

"But the Assets Recovery Agency has been successful in little else," he continued.

"It was ill-planned and recovered only about a third of its expenditure. Far too few cases were ever referred to it, its management information systems were in a mess, it prioritised cases badly and it underestimated the time it would take to pursue them.

"The Serious Organised Crime Agency will have to learn from these mistakes. Otherwise few criminals will suffer sleepless nights worrying about losing the proceeds of their crimes."

Mr Leigh was referring to PAC research that showed only 129 organisations out of a total of 696 referral partners had referred cases to the agency, while the committee also claimed that "insufficient preparatory work" had been carried out prior to the Assets Recovery Agency's creation.

In response to MPs' findings, the ARA insisted that it remained committed to helping the fight against crime.

A statement emphasised its successes in training more than 2,000 financial investigators across the UK and disrupting £217 million worth of assets in 320 cases.

"These results are very positive but the agency fully agrees that it did miss some of its targets historically," a spokeswoman elaborated.

"It has taken a year longer than originally planned to get its cases completed and through the courts and it wasn't until last year that it met the target of recovering more money from criminals than its baseline budget funded by the Treasury.

"The agency also fully accepts the findings and recommendations of the PAC report in relation to some aspects of its internal processes. [The] ARA is a relatively new organisation that has grown rapidly during the last four years."