Unauthorised fraud fell by eight per cent to £374.3 million in first half of 2020, as the banking industry prevented £853 million of losses. Criminals are exploiting and adapting to Covid-19 with a rise in online data harvesting and a fall in cheque and contactless card fraud. £207.8 million was lost to Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud, in line with the same period last year. Finance providers were able to return £73.1 million of APP fraud losses to victims, up 86 per cent compared to last year. £47.9 million of losses were reimbursed to victims under APP voluntary Code in first… Read More
INSIGHT: U.K. Tax Authority Getting Ready to Bite on Evasion
The U.K. tax authority is indicating its intention to enforce legislation and investigate corporations for failure to prevent tax evasion. Mukul Chawla QC and Kate Ison of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP review the current status of inquiries and discuss what action organizations need to take to ensure their procedures are robust and compliant. The focus by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) on organizations, under the Criminal Finances Act 2017, for the corporate offense of failure to prevent tax evasion, appears to be making steady progress. The number of investigations and inquiries that HMRC is currently undertaking, and the wide… Read More
What are the repercussions if a financial services firm is found guilty of facilitating tax evasion?
The offence of failure to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion (also known as the Corporate Criminal Offence or CCO) was introduced with great fanfare following the government initiative; ‘No Safe Havens’, which was part of an international initiative to increase tax transparency. As of 31 July 2020, HMRC announced that they had 10 CCO investigations open and a further 22 ‘opportunities under review’, meaning that HMRC are considering whether to open an investigation. Within these 32 investigations or ‘opportunities’, HMRC have disclosed that over a third relate to businesses within the financial sector. Businesses in the financial sector are… Read More
Eight-year NCA investigation denies organised crime group £17 million property portfolio
Fifty nine properties worth an estimated £17 million have been recovered following National Crime Agency investigations into a prolific organised crime group carried out over almost a decade. In addition to a successful criminal investigation, the NCA conducted four linked civil recovery investigations over an eight-and-a-half year period into dozens of individuals who were suspected of financial links to drug dealers in East Birmingham. NCA officers established that the properties were acquired using the proceeds of crime including heroin importation and distribution, fraud and money laundering. Alam and Ameran Zeb Khan have both been convicted of drug trafficking offences, the… Read More
FURLOUGH FRAUD AND THE FINANCE ACT 2020
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (the “Furlough Scheme”) The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) detrimentally impacted not just public health, the NHS and other vital public services, but the economy as a whole. The impact of the “lockdown” was that overnight a lot of businesses closed or experienced unparalleled revenue shrinkages. This placed jobs at risk. If employers could no longer generate revenue then they could no longer keep on employees. The spectre of redundancy loomed. In response, the government introduced The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (the ‘Furlough Scheme’). Instead of mass redundancy, businesses could retain staff, as an alternative to redundancy. … Read More