Anti money laundering

Request

1. The number of full time equivalent staff working on anti money laundering and asset recovery work in HMRC on 31 March 2007.
2. The number of full time equivalent staff working within HMRC on 31 March 2007 together with the total HMRC running cost for the financial year 2006 -07.

Response

The information HMRC is providing relates to four different work areas: the detection, seizure and forfeiture of crime-related cash (Part 5, Chapter 3 of the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) 2002); confiscation and money laundering investigations (Parts 2 and 7 of POCA); the administration and enforcement of the Money Laundering Regulations 2003 (superseded on 15 December last by the 2007 Regulations) in respect of the businesses which the department supervises; and intelligence and legal support to each of the above.

Asset recovery work is a core feature of all criminal investigation within HMRC. All criminal investigations are required to have an asset recovery strategy in place from the earliest stage of the operation to ensure that assets are restrained and successful prosecutions are followed by confiscation action.

In addition to the work in Detection, Intelligence and Criminal Investigation, HMRC also employ a number of staff in trader compliance, registration and policy areas in order to carry out our responsibilities under the Money Laundering Regulations.

Please note that although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this information, multi-functional working in some areas makes it difficult to measure the exact number of staff years used, therefore the information provided should be considered as best estimates only.

Summary of Information requested is provided below

Question 1
Detection: 100
Criminal Investigation: 283
Money Laundering Regulations: 132
Financial Intelligence: 79
Legal staff: 16

Question 2
Actual Full Time Staff within HMRC: 88,936

Actual cost of HMRC: £4,547.8m

Further information about HMRC that may be of interest to you that is in the public domain, most notably in the form of our annually published report (HMRC Annual Report) can be accessed at on our website at Reports & Plans.