UK police plan crackdown on ‘non-compliant’ solicitors

The National Crime Agency (NCA) is in the early stages of an operation responding to a purported increase in organised crime groups using the courts to frustrate law enforcement efforts, according to The Guardian.

Rob Richardson, head of the NCA’s modern slavery and human trafficking unit, said its work on the issue could end in solicitors being prosecuted or struck-off by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).

He said: “We will often see individual circumstances or individual accounts, where it is believed that, you know – I’m going to be careful not to use the word ‘corrupt’ – a non-compliant solicitor is advising in an organised crime group.

“So, what we need to do in the first instance is demonstrate that this is a real threat. And then look at kind of building some strategies around bringing together the appropriate plans to be able to tackle it.

“We are working with our partners. We are conducting a survey at present to understand who are the high-risk agents but we haven’t a sense of scale yet … It’s less than 100, it may well be in the 10s, I would estimate.”

The NCA’s approach is informed by “concerns that particularly Albanian organised crime groups are frustrating law enforcement efforts by claiming that they are victims of trafficking or seeking asylum”, he said.

“Where we are particularly interested from a NCA perspective is how does the legal industry, how do lawyers, support organised crime groups to do that,” he added.