The Law Commission of England and Wales is consulting on changes
to the regime in Part 2 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002
('POCA') for making confiscation orders against defendants
convicted of acquisitive crime. Though there is general agreement
that the regime has serious problems, there is a divergence of
views about what those problems are.
From the perspective of policy-makers and the media, the
problems of the regime are largely about enforcement. Although
courts regularly make orders in the sum of many millions of pounds,
in practice those sums are often not recovered, with the
implication that they are stashed away somewhere offshore, or have
been comprehensively spent by the offenders by the time the order
is made. Notably, the last set of changes made to the regime (in
2015) were largely aimed at tackling these problems, with a lower
threshold to restrain suspects' assets pending confiscation,
and higher default sentences for those who fail to pay.
