FIN.

SAR numbers increase but TI unimpressed

The NCA has reported a rise in SARs from the private sector in the past year.  It reports nearly 464,000 SARs received and processed in the year covered by its report.  However, Transparency International says this should not mask the failings in the system. TI is critical of the scarce resources and out of date system currently applied to investigating SARs.  It is also concerned that SARs from the legal sector fell, while company service providers filed only 53 SARs in the course of the year. It says the number of probable defensive SARs from the financial sector (reported as 22,000) both give  misleading impression of the real numbers of true suspicions and contributes to the unmanageable volumes of reports that mean genuine cases cannot be properly followed up. 5% of money laundering defence SARs were refused, while nearly 10% of the 42 defensive SARs made in respect of terrorist finance suspicions were refused.

Emma Radmore