A guide to money laundering offences in the United Kingdom

Members of Burges Salmon's Corporate Crime & Investigations team have recently authored the UK chapter of Lexology Panoramic: Anti-Money Laundering 2026, which is now live and can be accessed here: https://www.lexology.com/panoramic/workareas/anti-money-laundering. 

Burges Salmon's contribution deals with relevant UK laws, regulations and investigatory powers; criminal enforcement, including extraterritorial reach of applicable laws; compliance, including due diligence, high-risk categories of customers, business partners and transactions, record-keeping and reporting requirements, and the role of privacy laws; civil claims, including procedures, damages and other remedies; international anti-money laundering efforts; and recent trends.

A short introductory extract is below:

"Criminal enforcement

Which government entities enforce your jurisdiction’s money laundering laws?

The primary money laundering offences are investigated by a number of authorities including the police, the National Crime Agency (NCA), the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

Prosecutions for the primary money laundering offences are brought by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the NCA, the SFO and the FCA.

Defendants

Can both natural and legal persons be prosecuted for money laundering?

Yes. Both individuals (natural persons) and bodies corporate (legal persons) can be prosecuted for the primary money laundering offences.

• For conduct occurring before 26 December 2023, a corporate can only be convicted of a primary money laundering offence where an individual who, at the material time, represented the corporate’s “directing mind and will” is first convicted of the offence. The individual’s guilt is then attributed to the corporate. Whether an individual represents a corporate’s “directing mind and will” is a question of fact, but is historically understood to be officers at board level.
• For conduct occurring since 26 December 2023, a corporate can also be convicted of a primary money laundering offence where the offence is committed by a “senior manager” of the corporate acting within the actual or apparent scope of their authority. A senior manager is an individual who has a significant role in directing, managing or organising the whole or a substantial part of the corporate’s activities.

The change in the law means that it is now easier for a corporate to be prosecuted for a primary money laundering offence.

The offence of money laundering

What constitutes money laundering?

The Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) creates three primary money laundering offences, all of which relate to a person (including corporates) “dealing” with “criminal property” (as defined in POCA):

• concealing, disguising, converting, transferring or removing criminal property from England and Wales, or Scotland, or Northern Ireland;
• entering into or becoming concerned in an arrangement that facilitates the acquisition, retention, use or control of criminal property by another; and
• acquiring, using or having possession of criminal property.

Property is criminal property if it (1) constitutes a person’s benefit from criminal conduct or it represents such a benefit (in whole or part and whether directly or indirectly); and (2) the alleged offender knows or suspects that it constitutes or represents such a benefit.

Criminal conduct is conduct that constitutes an offence in any part of the United Kingdom, or would constitute an offence in any part of the United Kingdom if it occurred there. It is immaterial who carried out the criminal conduct or who benefited from it. A person benefits from criminal conduct if they obtain property as a result of, or in connection with, the criminal conduct.

Accordingly, each of the three primary money laundering offences requires the offender to know or suspect that the property constitutes or represents a person’s benefit from criminal conduct. As such, suspicion is sufficient, which is a very low threshold: the courts have held that, in the context of money laundering, suspicion means that a person must “think that there is a possibility, which is more than fanciful, that the relevant facts exist. A vague feeling of unease would not suffice. But [the suspicion does not have to be] ‘clear’ or ‘firmly grounded and targeted on specific facts’ or based upon ‘reasonable grounds’” (R v Da Silva [2006] EWCA Crim 1654)."

Reproduced with permission from Centellic. This content was first published in Lexology Panoramic: Anti-Money Laundering 2026. For further information, please visit https://www.lexology.com/panoramic/workareas/anti-money-laundering. 

For further information, please contact a member of the Burges Salmon Corporate Crime and Investigations team: Corporate crime, investigations and inquiries | Burges Salmon.