National Crime Agency calls for more funding to tackle Russian kleptocracy
The UK’s serious and organised crime-fighting force has complained it is struggling to tackle Russian kleptocracy and sanctions evasion because it is given only a third of the funding per officer handed to the FBI.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the UK had been slower to seize sanctioned Russian oligarchs’ assets than the US because it could not rely on the same “substantial level of investment” that Washington has poured into tackling international corruption and sanctions busting.
It said there were “hundreds more” specially trained American officers, investigators and prosecutors than British ones.
An NCA source told the Guardian in a briefing on Thursday that not only did the FBI have far more officers, but it received “something like three times as much funding per officer compared to the NCA”.
The agency said the lack of funding and attention given to kleptocracy – where a country’s elite use corruption to expand their wealth and power – had led to the UK being seen as a soft touch, attracting many oligarchs and corrupt figures to the capital, earning it the nickname “Londongrad”.
Last month the Commons foreign affairs committee said the government failure to tackle Russian kleptocrats laundering “dirty money” through the UK had resulted in millions of pounds used to finance Putin’s invasion of Ukraine flowing through London.
“I think it is fair to say we’ve all known about this problem for some time. It has taken time to work through,” the NCA source said. “Now we are making some process. We’re starting to shut some of those doors.”
However, he warned that the Home Office had asked the agency to model the effect of cutting its workforce by up to 40%. “We appreciate these are not easy economic times but having
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