Referrals

If a case is to be considered for adoption it must meet the following criteria:

• Criminal investigation and prosecution must have been considered and either failed or been impossible e.g. because of lack of resources in the law enforcement agency.
• For Civil Recovery, there must be evidence of criminal conduct that is supported to the civil standard of proof (i.e. on balance of probabilities) and that has generated the funding or acquisition of the referred recoverable property. The Civil Evidence Rules will apply and evidence may include hearsay, statements by co-accused or other material that could not be used in a criminal case. The professional opinion of an experienced police officer who knows the subject may also be used as evidence from an expert witness.
• For Tax Cases, there must be material to give rise to reasonable suspicion that there is criminality that has produced an untaxed income. The suspicion may rest in whole or in part on reliable intelligence.
• Recoverable property must have been identified to a value of at least £10,000 and acquired within the previous 12 years (or 20 years for Part 6 Tax).
• All relevant case papers both criminal and financial (where applicable) are to be made available for inspection and use by the Agency, in assessing this referral for adoption. (If documents are not made available to the Serious Organised Crime Agency then this may affect whether the case is adopted.)

Referrals after 1st April 2008 must be sent on the SOCA Referral Form, which you can obtain from the link below and forwarded to the SOCA Civil & Tax Single Point of Contact (SPOC):

Telephone: 0207 238 0225 (Out of Hours - 07855 405246)
Fax: 0207 238 8188
Post:
Civil Recovery & Tax Referrals
Serious Organised Crime Agency
PO Box 8000
London SE11 5EN

Cases can be discussed, if helpful to the referring agency, with the SPOC prior to an official referral.

Asset Recovery

"Asset recovery prevents criminal proceeds being reinvested in other forms of crime. By reducing the rewards of crime, it begins to affect the balance of risk and reward, and the prospect of losing profits may deter some from crime. Fundamentally it serves justice, in that nobody should be allowed to continue to profit from crime. The long term purpose of recovering the proceeds of crime is to reduce harm. Our performance regime has tended to measure success in terms of value recovered. There probably is a broad relationship between value and harm reduction - clearly the more extracted, the bigger the deterrence and crime prevention impact is likely to be. But asset recovery can also be powerful against lower level offenders who are damaging role models in communities. Visibly depriving these negative role models of their property can have an impact out of all proportion to the value of the goods recovered."
Asset Recovery Action Plan, Home Office, May 2007

Law Enforcement agencies have been able to take asset recovery action through the seizure of cash since the introduction of the Proceeds of Crime Act and also through criminal confiscation using legislation prior to that. However, two powers in the Proceeds of Crime Act for recovering criminal assets are less familiar as the exercise of the powers was not extended beyond the Assets Recovery Agency by the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

Civil Recovery

Wherever there are assets which are or represent property obtained through unlawful conduct in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, there is the potential for their recovery through the civil process provided for by the Proceeds of Crime Act 2005 (POCA). The key difference with the civil recovery process compared to the criminal is that the focus is not on an individual who has been convicted of an offence; it is on property that has been obtained through criminal conduct. The process also takes place in the High Court, rather than the Crown Court.

As part of a civil investigation, the investigator has access to a number of powers, provided for by the Proceeds of Crime Act 2005 (POCA):

• Customer Information Orders
• Production Orders
• Account Monitoring Orders
• Disclosure Orders
• Search & Seizure Orders

When sufficient evidence has been obtained the agency is able to restrain the assets through the use of further measures from POCA:

• Interim Receiving Order
• Property Freezing Order

Once the assets are secure, the agency will seek to establish to the High Court, to a civil standard of proof that the assets are or represent property derived from unlawful conduct and for the Court to order that they should be recovered.

Tax

SOCA, from 1st April, will conduct tax investigations throughout the UK, according to the terms set out in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. In such cases SOCA must have reasonable grounds to suspect that an individual has income, gain or profit as a result of either their own criminal activity or that of another person. SOCA will assume the role of HM Revenue & Customs to carry out a full investigation. This role will also extend to Corporation Tax where profits arise from a company's or another person's criminal conduct.

Referral Form [.doc, 72kb]
Proceeds of Crime Act 2002
Asset Recovery Action Plan