The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA)

The IFA is a Supervisor for Anti-Money Laundering under HM Treasury, and is also a Regulator of its members under SOCA. This page tries to give members some insight into SOCA.

SOCA is London-based, but has officers working in all parts of the United Kingdom. The Agency has ultimate responsibility for gathering information about suspected money laundering, and briefing the Crown Prosecution Service in the event of sufficient information being accumulated (often from a number of different sources) to warrant a prosecution of a suspected criminal.

It is an Agency set up which sits between HM Treasury, the Home Office, HMRC and the Police.  Prosecution under the Proceeds of Crime Act, while often co-ordinated by SOCA, may equally be pursued by the Police, especially the City of London Police, which has a specialist unit.

The SOCA Proceeds of Crime department is in the Intervention directorate of SOCA. It aims to reduce harm to the UK by taking the profit out of crime and operates across four areas:

• ·         Business Strategy - Providing strategic direction and innovation.

• ·         Operations - Which aims to disrupt and recover the proceeds of crime; and develop others’ capability to do so. The department champions proceeds of crime-related activity to ensure that all SOCA’s operational activity contains elements of financial investigation, asset denial and recovery.

• ·         UKFIU -The United Kingdom Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU) has national responsibility for the gathering, analysis and dissemination of financial intelligence submitted through the Suspicious Activity Report regime. The FIU also includes the National Central Office for the Suppression of Counterfeit Currency (NCO) which is responsible for all matters relating to the counterfeiting of currency and protected coins.  The UKFIU is the usual section with which you, as reporters of suspicious activity, may deal.

• ·         Civil Recovery & Tax - The Civil Recovery and Tax Branch (CRT) comprises financial investigators and lawyers who work together to recover the proceeds of crime using civil legislation. If property is identified i.e. houses, money or any other valuable object, that has been financed by criminal activity it may be recovered, therefore the CRT mostly deal with cases that have failed during the criminal process for whatever reason.

All four branches of the POC department work closely with partners from law enforcement and regulators (including IFA) in the private and public sectors both in the UK and internationally.

The security of information (and informers) given to SOCA is guaranteed not to be leaked to any person or organisation outside SOCA and the Crown Prosecution Service.

You are most likely to interface with SOCA when you make a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR). SARs and how to make them are covered in another document.

Some of the IFA’s regional presentations may include presentations by SOCA officers; this is a public service provided at no cost to the Institute, and may be considered as part of the educational initiative presented by the anti-money laundering legislation.

Of necessity, given the nature of many crimes within its scope, identities of individual officers are usually not made public. If you have a question which the IFA, as a Supervisor and Regulator, cannot answer, we undertake to put it to an appropriate SOCA officer on your behalf.