Crime assets agency 'ill-planned'

The agency spent £65m but recovered only £23m

The setting up of a government agency to seize criminals' wealth was ill-planned and unrealistic, an influential group of MPs has said.

The Home Office had set "unachievable delivery aims for" the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA), the Commons public accounts committee added.

It was revealed earlier this year that the ARA had cost £65m over four years, but seized assets worth £23m.

The agency is set to be disbanded from next year.

The committee criticised the agency for concentrating its efforts on recovering the full value of criminals' illegal assets by court action, rather than negotiating settlements which left them with some of their gains.

A single case in which a settlement was negotiated accounted for more than half of the £23m recovered.

'Where it hurts'

This took just 15 months to complete, compared with the four-year average for cases pursued through the courts, said the report.

The agency was established in 2003 by the then home secretary David Blunkett.

Its powers were so extensive it could even seize assets from people who had not been convicted of any crime.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency will have to learn from these mistakes. Edward Leigh MP

When the agency opened, Mr Blunkett said: "We are hitting organised criminals where it really hurts - in their pockets."

The committee said fewer than one-fifth of the 696 organisations which had the power to refer cases to the agency had ever done so.

Two police forces had referred no cases.

Almost a quarter of the agency's budget was swallowed up by fees to outside receivers, who charged more than £200,000 a time for managing frozen assets.

And the decision to locate its head office in London meant that staff turnover was high, with 50% of its legal team moving on every 12 months.

The agency is due to be disbanded from April next year and its duties transferred to the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

'Sleepless nights'

The committee's chairman, Conservative MP Edward Leigh, said: "It was ill-planned and recovered only about a third of its expenditure.

"Far too few cases were ever referred to it, its management information systems were in a mess, it prioritised cases badly and it underestimated the time it would take to pursue them.

"The Serious Organised Crime Agency will have to learn from these mistakes.

"Otherwise few criminals will suffer sleepless nights worrying about losing the proceeds of their crimes."

The transfer to Soca is part of what investigators say is a complete rethink of how law enforcement agencies should target criminal profits.

Soca, which has itself faced criticism in its first year, is trying to target wealthy criminals by finding ways of making it impossible for them to "do business".

Its bosses say recovering assets is a key part of the strategy because top criminals often regard a few years in prison as tolerable, providing their money remains hidden away.

Soca's first annual report shows that it failed to hit any of its targets for asset recovery, although it says it is still dealing with difficult cases it inherited at its launch and that seizing criminal cash takes time.