The National Crime Agency has seen a surge in so-called suspicious activity reports filed by banks and other regulated institutions in the U.K. since February.
The NCA, Britain’s equivalent of the FBI, on Thursday gave an update on the figures for the first time. The notices, which detail concerns around sanctions breaches as well as money laundering and terrorist financing, are often the starting point for an investigation by police.
The NCA, which started out as an agency focused on organized crime, is retooling to target the outsize influence of the oligarchs and their enablers. It’s now set up a new Kleptocracy Unit to tackle the problem and is targeting those who have proximity to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his core regime.
“We are up against an opponent that is essentially the state” said an NCA spokesman, who spoke on the condition his name wasn’t used. “This is about starting to push back on this concept of ‘Londongrad,’ that people were free to come regardless of their money and do whatever they liked.”
Moscow-on-Thames
The U.K. efforts to wean itself off Russian wealth, which earned the capital the monikers Londongrad and Moscow-on-Thames, have picked up speed since the war in Ukraine started, with a swath of government initiatives designed to combat dirty money funneled through the system.
The agency has been investigating whether billionaire Petr Aven evaded sanctions with last-minute transfers of funds and raided the tycoon’s mansion outside London in May. Aven declined to comment on the raid earlier this week.
While it’s one of the few public probes, in total around a dozen “enablers” working with wealthy individuals have been arrested so far, the NCA said. “It’s about breaking the confidence of some of these elites and their enablers,” the spokesman said.
There are early signs that the investigations and arrests are deterring Russian investment into London, the spokesman said, declining to give more detail.
The police force wouldn’t disclose the money allocated for the new unit but the NCA’s overall budget is a fraction of the size of their U.S. counterparts. Spending per officer at the Federal Bureau of Investigation is about triple that of their NCA opposite number, the agency said.
