This report from the BBC (see extract below) highlights large cash payments being made in highstreet shops for smuggling illegals into the UK, these payments are meant to be picked up by HMRC as part of their AML monitoring procedures.
HMRC supervises many "high-risk" businesses for AML compliance, including money service businesses (MSBs), informal value transfer systems (like hawala-style operations), high-cash businesses (car washes, phone shops, wholesalers), and others. These are exactly the types of entities named in the BBC report.Wake up guys!
People smugglers are directing migrants to pay for illegal Channel crossings using a network of UK-registered businesses, a BBC investigation has found.
We secretly filmed staff at a shop in south-east London telling an undercover researcher that nearly £3,000 in cash could be deposited with them and sent to a smuggler in France.
"You put your money here. If your friends reach [the UK], you shouldn't come back," we were told at the mobile phone store in Woolwich.
Our three-month investigation gives insight into how smugglers appear to be using UK companies' bank accounts to facilitate small-boat crossings - something a leading expert in criminal finance told us he had not seen before.
Our findings suggest a "brazen attitude" by smugglers, says Tom Keatinge, from the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) security think tank.
"It is a concern that... people feel sufficiently confident they can be out in the open."
As well as the phone shop, the smuggler in France provided the bank account details of two UK-registered companies, which he said could both take electronic transfers for migrant crossings.
One is a wholesale business in Newcastle upon Tyne, the other is a car wash in Cambridgeshire.
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Maybe HMRC needs to stop recruiting low IQ wooden tops!!!!
ReplyDeleteSays a low IQ wooden top.
DeleteThe endless drive for box ticking efficiency has it's consequences. Architects long gone on fat SCS pensions. When there were local offices, experienced officers knew the businesses on their patch. Consolidation and some plank looking at a tax return 300 miles away give criminals free reign. Which means millions if not billions of fraud.
ReplyDeleteEasier to send out brown envelopes to Mecca Bingo Maureen for £80 and shut the phones down
I remember back in the day an officer in C&E discovering a fraudulent VAT registration because he recognised the handwriting of the criminal making the application and using an alias.
DeleteBut apparently that level of local knowledge doesn't count as long as you can save money by closing officers