La lecture du «Mutual Evaluation Report » du GAFI publié en décembre 2018 permet notamment d'apprendre que la base de données de la National Crime Agency (NCA) contient 2.3 millions de SARs (p. 39). 

Le rapport du GAFI contient une foule d'informations. On en mentionnera simplement quelques-unes.

• « The UK is a global leader in promoting corporate transparency and goes beyond the FATF Recommendations in this area in some respects. It promotes the use of public registers of beneficial ownership (BO) in a variety of fora and has led by example in establishing a public registry of BO"information and a register of trusts with tax consequences in the UK. » (p. 145)1
• « Beneficial ownership refers to the person(s) who ultimately own(s) or control(s) an asset (for example, a property or a company) and benefit(s) from it. The concept of beneficial ownership exists because the direct legal owner of an asset is not necessarily the person ultimately controlling and benefitting from the asset. For example, the direct legal owner of a residential property may be an anonymous company registered overseas.
• Registers of beneficial ownership play a key role in the ongoing debate about transparency of ownership.
• The UK has registers of beneficial ownership for three different types of assets: companies, properties and land, and trusts. Information on the beneficial ownership of companies is publicly available. For properties owned by overseas companies and legal entities, the Government plans to launch a public beneficial ownership register in 2021. The register for trusts is not public.
• Around the world, many countries have created or have plans to create registers. All British Overseas Territories will introduce public registers for companies, although the date is subject to some controversy. UK legislation asks them to do so by the end of 2020, and if they have not done so by then, the Government would order them to do it by a certain date. Crown Dependencies have committed to following suit when public registers become the global norm. The UK Government seeks to make that the norm by the end of 2023, although MPs might vote to require Crown Dependencies to open their registers earlier. In the EU, member states have until January 2020 to make public the beneficial ownership of legal entities such as companies.“

Le rapport du GAFI contient des indications sur les montants saisis et confisqués : 

• « The total amounts restrained and recovered are high, amounting to GBP 1.3 billion restrained and GBP 1 billion recovered since 2014 using POCA, civil recovery, and agency-specific disgorgement mechanisms (see Table 16). HMRC has recovered a further GBP 3.4 billion since 2016 (see para. 205 below). POCA confiscation and cash forfeiture account for the largest share of assets recovered (see table 16). Civil recovery was once considered only as a secondary alternative to confiscation, but authorities confirmed this is no longer the case and civil recovery is now considered an equivalent action to pursue in first instance. This is not reflected in the statistics which show a decreasing number of civil recovery orders, with a fluctuating amount recovered » (p. 73)

On notera la possibilité d'utiliser la «civil recovery », soit des mesures qui ne relèvent pas de la confiscation pénale :

• « The Civil Recovery and Tax department (CRT) uses powers available under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to recover property obtained through unlawful conduct. The NCA seeks to use these powers in cases where asset denial will have the most disruptive impact and most contribution to a reduction in crime.They are non-conviction based powers and can be used when the criminal process has failed or cannot proceed or it is considered that the CRT approach represents a better deployment of resources.
• Civil recovery can be used where it can be shown, on the balance of probabilities, that assets have been financed through the proceeds of crime. Civil recovery proceedings are conducted at the High Court and can be used against assets of any kind, for example; houses, vehicles and funds in bank accounts. Tax powers can be used if there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a person or company has earned income, profit or gain at least partly through criminal conduct and it has not been declared to HMRC. The NCA can effectively take over the tax powers from HMRC and raise an assessment for the tax owing plus penalties and interest.Civil recovery and tax powers can be used in isolation or together and do not preclude future prosecutions. »234

Le droit anglais de la confiscation semble être plus rigoureux que le droit suisse puisque :

• « 193. Criminal restraint and confiscation in the UK is value-based. This facilitates asset recovery as authorities are not required to identify specific illicit assets in order to pursue restraint and confiscation.
• 194. Confiscation is also facilitated under POCA through automatic assumptions being made in certain cases where the offender has been found to have a criminal lifestyle. The assumptions apply to many of the UK’s priority offences including ML, drug trafficking, people trafficking, and terrorism. In these cases, the court will assume that any property transferred to the defendant or expenditure by the defendant in the six years preceding criminal proceedings, or any property held by the defendant after the date of conviction, is assumed to have been obtained through criminality. The value of this property is then used in calculating the benefit obtained by the defendant for the purpose of confiscation (unless the defendant can prove otherwise or there would be a serious risk of injustice if the assumption were to be made). » (p. 75)
• En 2016. 3747 déclarations d'importation et d'exportation de cash (10 000 € ou plus) ont eu lieu aux frontières pour un montant de 466 430 404 UK £ (p. 52).

• 1. Sur ce thème des régistres publics des bénéficiaires économiques : House of Commons Library, Briefing Paper, Number 8259, 15 March 2019 Registers of beneficial ownership .
• 2. Civil Recovery and Tax .
• 3. Les mesures sont prévues par le Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
• 4. Voir également sur le thème, The proceeds of crime act 2002 (poca) guidance under section 2a, january 2018.