Written question asked by Owen Paterson (Conservative) on Wednesday, 10 December 2008, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 15 December 2008. It was answered by Alan Campbell (Labour) on Thursday, 15 January 2009 on behalf of the Home Office.

Serious Organised Crime Agency: Assets Recovery Agency

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many cases the Assets Recovery Agency had under investigation with a view to civil recovery or taxation action in which no action to restrain assets had yet been taken as at 31 March 2008; what the estimated value of the assets under investigation in those cases was; how many of those investigations were subsequently terminated by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency without court action; what the reasons for the termination were in those cases; what the estimated value of assets in terminated cases was; and in respect of such terminated cases, what steps have been taken to remove relevant assets from criminals.

Answer: Data relating to the transfer of cases from the Assets Recovery Agency to the Serious Organised Crime Agency was not collated to this level of detail, as there would be no operational value and some cost in doing so. This information could be obtained only at disproportionate cost (through manual collation from case files). SOCA has terminated 10 cases since the merger, in which no Property Freezing Order/Interim Receiving Order or Recovery Order had been granted as at 31 March 2008. The reasons for terminating these cases were:"no assets to recover (1)""insufficient evidence to link assets to criminality (5)""further evidence of criminality found—case referred for criminal investigation (3)""case erroneously referred—criminal case still under appeal (1)."In these cases either there were no assets to recover, or insufficient evidence, or an ongoing criminal investigation which rendered any assets outside the scope of the civil recovery powers.

Secondary information