What We Do

The Agency exists to make sure crime doesn’t pay.

We work with our partner Agencies in a concerted effort to take the profit out of crime through civil recovery action, criminal confiscation or taxation.  Find more detail about our operational role by following the links on the left.

We are building capacity throughout the law enforcement world by training and supporting financial investigators nationwide. For further information about training and support for FIs see the section on Financial Investigation Centre of Excellence.

Enforcement

Under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 the Assets Recovery Agency was granted the powers to enforce its own cases, whether these be criminal, civil and tax. It is vital that the Agency adopts a systematic approach to enforcement to ensure that we collect the assets identified during the investigation process. The Agency has adopted a mixed approach to enforcement, i.e. use of in-house and out-sourced resources. The Agency will seek to enforce as many cases in-house as possible, appointing agents and experts to act on our behalf to realise various assets e.g. auctioneers, valuers, High Court Enforcement Officers etc. In some cases it will not be possible to enforce in-house and a receiver will need to be nominated to act as Trustee (civil) or Director's Receiver (criminal) on our behalf. This will mainly be in cases where there are significant overseas interests, business(es) to be managed, multiple tenanted properties etc.

If part of the recoverable property is cash this will be transferred directly into our recovered assets account. For assets consisting of property e.g. vehicles, houses, jewellery etc. we will generally sell these publicly. This can be done by a variety of methods depending on the type of property we have. Our experience so far has led to houses and vehicles being sold at public auction in the local area. However if we have more specialised assets they will be taken to a specialist dealer. The assets will be listed in the brochure for sale alongside all the other assets, but might not specify that we are selling them. However it is our policy to adveritse the fact that we have recovered goods and will most likely issue a press release stating that the goods are to be sold at auction. We do not issue a particular schedule of assets to be sold or dates. All assets are dealt with on a case by case basis and therefore we do not have a pre-planned schedule of sales, auctions etc.