OUR GLOBAL MOVEMENT
Corrupt funds that are laundered through the UK represent misery for millions of people. The money has been stolen from corruption-resources-corruption-resources-health and corruption-resources-corruption-resources-education budgets from infrastructure and law enforcement, and many other areas of public spending.
This both degrades those services and removes funds that should rightfully be invested in their country of origin.
The stolen funds should be identified frozen, seized and – with proper safeguards – returned to the rightful owners. This is what the recovery of corruptly-obtained assets aims to achieve.
The purpose of this paper is to describe the blocks in the system that are preventing recovery of the proceeds of grand corruption located in or routed through, the UK.
A visualisation of some of the report’s findings is accessible here.
As an anti-corruption body, Transparency International UK (TI-UK) is concerned with preventing money laundering since the facility to launder the proceeds of corruption gives rise to the commission of bribery and corruption offences in the first place. TI helped international banks to establish the Wolfsburg Principles (the global anti-money laundering guidelines for private banking) in 2000. Reports by TI-UK in 2003 and 2004 focused on corruption and money laundering in the UK and the regulation of trust and company service providers respectively.
