Goodbye NCIS, Hello SOCA!

Many UK solicitors will be under the impression that the forthcoming Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 will include nothing of relevance to them. That would be their first mistake!

Not only will the proposed Act deal with serious organised crime, and replace the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) with the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), it will also contain a rag-bag of amendments to existing legislation including the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

Criminal law changes

It is true that many of the changes will be chiefly of interest to practitioners of criminal law. For them there is a whole raft of new laws relating to arrest of suspected offenders; power to compel persons to answer police questions and produce documents (based on the powers currently available only to the Serious Fraud Office); enhanced powers of stop and search; new provisions relating to fingerprinting, photographing and obtaining samples from suspects; the establishment and powers of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA); and new statutory provisions relating to Queen's Evidence, reductions of sentences and the protection of witnesses. Most newsworthy perhaps are the provisions relating to racial and religious hatred, seizure of uninsured motor vehicles and trespass. Most worrying may be the new powers of Magistrates to make confiscation orders of up to 10,000 and financial reporting orders for up to 5 years.

Changes affecting most UK lawyers

The purpose of this article however is to highlight the proposed amendments to proceeds of crime and money laundering legislation which will affect the greatest number of UK lawyers.

Major changes to UK proceeds of crime law came into effect as recently as March 2004 with the introduction of the Money Laundering Regulations 2003 and the wholesale amendment of Schedule 9 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (PoCA 2002), which brought the provision of certain legal services within the 'regulated sector'. Little more than a year earlier the provisions of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 had come into effect. Further changes to the law in this area so soon are unlikely to be welcome to practitioners, yet virtually every section of Part VII of PoCA 2002 is to be amended.

However it seems that already the application of the earlier law in practice has revealed that it does not operate entirely as the lawmakers would wish.

Letter writing criminalised

One perceived problem is the propensity of lawyers to write...