Serious Organised Crime Agency

From Free net encyclopedia

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) is a policing agency of the United Kingdom that acts against organised crime, including the illegal drugs trade, money laundering, and people smuggling.

1 Background
2 Administration
3 Intelligence role and secrecy
4 Money laundering
5 See also
6 External links
7 References

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Background

SOCA formally came into being on 1 April 2006 following a merger of the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the investigative and intelligence sections of HM Customs and Excise on serious drug trafficking, and the Immigration Service's responsibilities for organised immigration crime.

The creation of the agency was announced on 9 February 2004 as one of the elements of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, which also restricts protests and demonstrations in central London, and widens powers of arrest and the use of search warrants.

Parallels have been drawn between the organisation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States: indeed, the press has labelled SOCA as the "British FBI".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Unlike the FBI, however, SOCA does not have responsiblity for dealing with terrorism. Comparisons with the FBI are not strictly accurate due to non-federal nature of the United Kingdom and the completely different structure of policing. Police forces will continue to deal with most crime whilst SOCA will assist forces and also work independently with regards to serious organised crime.

Former National Crime Squad detective Peter Blekesley said SOCA "needs to be elite. It needs to be secretive to a certain degree. To catch people in the highest echelon of organised crime needs a lot of dedication, a lot of expertise, a lot of officers who are multi-skilled, and devotion to the task. It's not an easy thing to take out the top people who are top of the criminal pile."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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Administration

The agency is an executive non-departmental public body sponsored by, but operationally independent from, the Home Office. It is funded by central government, with a provisional budget for 2006/7 of £457m, of which £416m funds on-going resources and £41m is capital investment.<ref>FAQs from SOCA website.</ref>. It will have around 4,200 employees, of which 400 are backroom staff. Of the remaining workforce, half will be criminal investigators and the other half will focus on analysis and intelligence. SOCA will co-operate closely with the police, intelligence agencies, the Assets Recovery Agency, HM Revenue and Customs, foreign police forces and others.

It is led by a board with 11 members. The non-executive chairman, responsible for the overall approach of SOCA, is Sir Stephen Lander, a former head of MI5. The other non-executive directors of the board are Stephen Barrett, Elizabeth France, Ken Jarrold, Janet Paraskeva and General Sir Roger Wheeler. Day-to-day leadership is provided by the Director General, Bill Hughes, who is able to designate SOCA officers as having the powers of a police constable, a customs officer, or an immigration officer. The other executive directors of the board are David Bolt, Malcolm Cornberg, Paul Evans and Trevor Pearce.<ref>Governance from SOCA website.</ref>

The board has decided that around 40% of its effort should be devoted to combatting drug trafficking, 25% to tackling organised immigration crime, around 10% to fraud, 15% on other organised crime and the remaining 10% on supporting other law enforcement agencies.<ref>Aims from SOCA website.</ref>

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Intelligence role and secrecy

SOCA operates from at least 40 offices across the UK. SOCA officers are empowered to perform a number of surveillance roles traditionally associated with British intelligence services such as MI5, although, unlike MI5 officers, some designated SOCA officers enjoy powers of arrest. SOCA's officers are not required to take the traditional police oath and SOCA is exempt from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.

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Money laundering

SOCA takes over responsibility for dealing with suspicious activity reports (SARs), previously made to NCIS under the money laundering legislation. NCIS received just under 200,000 SARs in 2005. Despite criticism from professional representative bodies that the disclosure rules are too broad, SOCA has said that up to one in three SARs lead to or add substantially to terrorism investigations; that HMRC estimates that around one in five SARs identifies new subjects of interest, and one in four SARs lead to direct tax enquiries; and that many arrests and confiscactions of criminal assets.<ref>Financial Intelligence from SOCA website.</ref>

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