The NCA Flexes Its Muscles With Account Freezing Orders

On 7 February 2019, the UK National Crime Agency ("NCA") announced that it had, for the first time, successfully used its powers of account freezing orders ("AFOs") to forfeit over £400,000 from three UK bank accounts suspected of harbouring dirty money. Three weeks later, the National Economic Crime Centre ("NECC") indicated its intention to use AFOs to apply to freeze a further 95 accounts suspected of being funded by laundered money.

AFOs allow the NCA and Serious Fraud Office ("SFO") to apply to freeze, and subsequently forfeit, funds held in bank accounts and building societies. The power to apply for an AFO was granted by the Criminal Finances Act 2017 ("CFA 2017"), which also introduced the offence of failure to prevent facilitation of tax evasion and Unexplained Wealth Orders ("UWOs"). Amid the fanfare of the failure to prevent offence and UWOs, AFOs have flown somewhat under the radar. However, they could prove to be a powerful tool for the NCA, providing