Crime bosses who launder huge sums of money from their activities will have their assets seized by a government agency, the British Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, said yesterday.
Announcing details of the £54 million scheme in the Proceeds of Crime Bill, Mr Straw said the proposed Criminal Assets Recovery Agency (CARA) would have the power to confiscate properties, cars and other investments as well as impose huge tax bills on criminals, companies or partnerships.
Mr Straw first raised the prospect of targeting criminal assets last year, and the Bill is expected before parliament soon, with CARA operating across the UK by 2003. Home Office officials estimate that the new agency could seize up to £650 million a year, and police have passed to the Home Office names of 39 alleged criminals who have an estimated £200 million between them.
The government has also acknowledged that it needs to increase the amount of money seized from criminal activities because it compares badly with the achievements of other governments. Mr Straw said that according to 1996 OECD figures, only $22 in criminal assets per million of GDP was seized in the UK, compared with $99 in the US and $230 in Ireland.
The agency will have the power to investigate criminals in a new way, namely that its civilian investigators will be allowed to freeze criminals' assets before police charge them with an offence.
In another new development, High Courts will only be asked to decide whether money is derived from criminal activity according to the civil burden of proof - which is on the balance of probabilities - rather than the stricter criminal requirement that the evidence must prove a criminal element beyond reasonable doubt.
But the civil rights group Liberty condemned the proposals, accusing the government of reducing protection against mistakes made by the police. "It removes the basic protection that you will only have your belongings and finances investigated and seized if you are proved to have done wrong to criminal standard," the group's director of public affairs, Ms Deborah Clark, said.
In a separate announcement, the Trade and Industry Secretary, Mr Stephen Byers, said the minimum wage would be raised by 10 per cent from £3.70 to £4.10 an hour later this year. Adult workers will also receive a further 10p increase to £4.20 from October next year.
Many unions welcomed the increase, saying it represented another significant step toward decent rates of pay.