POCA – Accredited Financial Investigators
“Who are those guys?”
A few dots on the horizon and a plume of dust; then Butch says to Sundance[1], “Who are those guys?” For days, the pair of outlaws had been trailed across the plains of the mid-West by a hand-picked team of detectives[2]. They were unable to believe the tenacity and skill of a new profession in the making and, when eventually cornered, memorably jumped into a raging torrent as their only way of escape. Today’s criminals must sometimes feel the same, except there is no dust and no warning when an Accredited Financial Investigator is on your tail.
In the twenty years since the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) 2002, approximately 100,000 people in the UK have been deprived of somewhere north of £3.5 billion in criminal proceeds. To be clear, this is not temporarily frozen assets, but final court judgements. Victim compensation of about £30 million a year has been returned over recent years[3]. This was achieved by a leap in performance in the first decade and steady results up to date, with last year being a record-breaking third of a billion pounds. These impressive results have been achieved by innovation of the traditional criminal justice system, and broadly speaking, been matched by a fall in volume crime over the whole period (as intended). Crime fell markedly at the start of the period but has risen slightly in recent years.
The meaning of Accreditation
The Accredited Financial Investigator is unique to the UK and a major ingredient to its asset recovery success. The UK AFI is accredited by statute, by Section 3 of POCA which states that the financial investigators must be trained and their performance monitored. The power to accredit rests with the Secretary of State for the Home Office (the UK Minister of Interior) and this is delegated to the head of the National Crime Agency. The overall purpose of the system was to place ‘more emphasis on financial investigation to help law enforcement uncover criminal assets as a routine part of their business’[4],
The reasons to formalise the accreditation are to ensure that AFIs work to a good (hopefully excellent) standard, and to ensure that their performance is under control. The POCA provides awesome powers to AFIs, they are law enforcement’s ultimate weapon in the fight against crime. I am reassured that these conditions protect me and the general public from any excessive zeal by what Butch would have called “those guys”. I say this because I used to be an AFI and I understand the intrusive powers that they wield. These are necessary to tackle some of the most difficult problems facing our protective services. It is perfectly correct that the people at the cutting edge of fighting crime have the sharpest legal tools and the most tempered skills with which to tackle otherwise untouchable criminals. POCA’s financial investigators truly reach the criminals that other investigators cannot reach. They achieve this by accessing an intricate, ever-changing web of data spread across companies, sectors and institutions. This is why they need such training and other support mechanisms. The first AFIs were in the police, Customs, Serious Fraud Office and similar law enforcement agencies, but they quickly spread to local authorities, the Environment Agency, Trading Standards, the Health Service and every government department that needs protection from criminals. All trained to the same standard, mentored in the workplace, and subject to Continuous Professional Development.
The Joint Asset Recovery Database
The results of AFI work are recorded on the Joint Asset Recovery Database, which is now an unparalleled repository of every courier and money launderer[5] to come to the notice of any agency in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In terms of studying what works in asset recovery it is the most important data resource in the country, probably any country. I say any country because the UK asset recovery regime is so diverse, having five distinct legal regimes[6] and a long operational history in three jurisdictions: England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. My international experience is that many countries have no asset recovery database at all, or if they do, it is just a list of assets for the purpose of asset administration. The JARD does this function of course, but its real utility is as an intelligence database for future offending, an analytical resource for ‘what works’ and an academic resource for criminologists and crime scientists. Given its longevity, diversity and completeness it amounts to a ‘national treasure’.
Its methodological basis and its subsequent technical development over twenty years has, of course, immense monetary value, especially in a world that desperately needs such technology in the world’s 200+ jurisdictions. NCA and Financial Action Task Force officials to note, please.
Multi-agency working
‘Parallel’ criminal and financial investigation is the bedrock of asset recovery success according to the FATF, so it follows that Multi-agency teams are the obvious organisational response. This has been reflected in the European Union’s Asset Recovery Offices and creation of numerous multi-agency teams (MATs) all over the world. The British have their asset recovery MATs at a Regional level. A MAT environment creates multiple efficiencies: wider access to diverse data and a plethora of operational and legal options. It goes much further than mere collaborative working. MATs bring trust and cooperation at a much deeper level. A MAT will recognise criminal activity where a single agency, in my experience, will miss it altogether.
Mistakes were made
Multiagency team building is a surprisingly difficult process, I have witnessed spectacular mistakes all over the world. Financial investigators have been seconded into a newly created MAT and then lost their investigative powers/ been denied access to their agency intelligence/ lost their legal competence to start enquiries/ been denied future career progression; sometimes all of these.
For countries trying to build an asset recovery MAT the AFI system offers a potential solution. The statutory status of AFIs makes them far easier to deploy against the multiple harms that are susceptible to financial investigation and asset recovery.
Understandably, I think, untrained police managers in the UK initially thought that AFIs had some sort of back-office accountancy function; something to be used once a person has been arrested and assets have been found. This led to serious tactical and strategic management mistakes. Consequently, a two-day managers’ course was found to be necessary to ensure that AFIs were locally deployed in proactive units at the sharp end of policing, providing vital intelligence before operational interventions and on-the-ground expertise for subsequent searches and interviews. As everyone now knows in asset recovery ‘what you seize is what you get’. Failure to deploy AFIs properly, so that assets are identified and seized at the start of an investigation, means that criminals get to keep their assets through management negligence.
AFIs have unique abilities to connect people to people, people to places and people to events. They can therefore be used to track dangerous offenders at large, identify previously unknown offenders, find missing persons and address a host of other policing issues. It is perhaps obvious to readers that financial information exists about everyone; it follows that financial intelligence can used to find rapists and hooligans as well as those concerned in financial crimes or making money from crime.
Next steps
The UK has got a long way towards building a profession of AFIs. The concept has much to offer the rest of the world right now, but we should also modernise, using twenty years of experience and expert knowledge of a changing world. I see four issues: international cooperation, retention, management and public-private partnership.
The international nature of financial investigation has become ever clearer, as shown by the global expansion of CARIN[7] and the consolidation of the ARO network in and around the EU. Extending the AFI concept internationally would hugely enhance cooperation.
The established benefits of MAT cross-fertilisation could be spread across all of law enforcement by endowing AFIs with uniform terms and conditions that allow the freedom to move agency. This would allow all agencies to benefit from attracting AFIs from diverse geographical, professional or crime-type backgrounds. By the same token it would create an exciting and diverse career path for AFIs. This would help with the retention issues which currently plague law enforcement.
Poor strategic management of financial investigation has hampered asset recovery globally, so there is a need to create an AFI manager role, similarly accredited. This would improve effective deployment of AFIs and create an additional career path.
Public-private information sharing is the basis of the whole AML regime and there is the potential to enhance this by sharing not only data but people. For many years there has been a one-way flow of financial investigators, trained and experienced at the public expense, into the private sector. This is a general societal good, because private sector information from these people supports crime prevention in general. If the AFI concept could be extended into the private sector then the flow of skilled, experienced people could become a two-way street. This would require careful thought, but I think it would be worth considering.
A final word from Butch
It is obvious, but worth saying, that British AFIs are only as effective as the local laws and procedures permit. Butch and Sundance understood how national frontiers frustrate law enforcement pursuers and eventually fled their own country to wreak havoc in Bolivia.
When I took over the management of the Financial Investigation Units of the Metropolitan Police in 2000 they numbered 25 people, all police officers, all but two were men and the majority had over 20 years’ service. By 2012, across the country ‘Those guys’ numbered 2622, over 30% were not police officers at all and over 25% were female[8]. Diversity brings investigative strength to asset recovery, in my view.
What would Butch have made of it all? I guess he might have said: “For a moment there I thought we were in a lot of trouble”. He was right.
[1] The eponymous lead characters in the 1969 film classic ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’, a story based on two real-life American outlaws.
[2] The world-famous Pinkerton Detective Agency
[3] Stats from recent years can be found in the Home Office Asset Recovery Bulletin
[4] Hansard 19 June 2000
[5] In theory, this means every successful financial criminal is in the JARD, assuming that they are recognised as ‘successful’ and therefore financially investigated.
[6] These are: specific offence confiscation; ‘Lifestyle’ offence confiscation; non-conviction-based cash forfeiture and non-conviction-based asset recovery. The fifth regime is the traditional confiscation of instrumentalities under old legislation.
[7] The Camden Asset Recovery Interagency Network is an international financial intelligence network.
[8] I would be grateful for up-to date data, if any reader would like to contact me.