Our New Secret Police
Compare this transcript then with the two PDF files on the National Crime Squad – then look at the beast SOCA.
National Crime Squad Annual Report 2004-2005 (948k pdf)
National Crime Squad Information 2002 (1197k pdf)
| This ‘police force’ is quasi military – more clandestine than MI5 – and ultimately directed by the Home Secretary? Why? |
Q & A: The Serious Organised Crime Agency
FBI-style agency to 'make life hell' for UK's most wanted gangs
Crime-busting ideas imported from the US
British FBI will target gang barons
New 'British FBI' will have more than 100 officers based abroad
WORKING AGAINST SERIOUS CRIME
Sir Stephen Lander
See also
Taken from the Guardian
2006-04-03
With the official launch of an FBI-style national law-enforcement body in Britain, George Wright and David Fickling explain all you need to know about the new agency
What is Soca?
The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) is the UK's first attempt to set up a single body to tackle major organised crime. The two main police services which previously dealt with organised crime, the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) and the National Crime Squad (NCS), have been merged into a single body. Additionally, relevant parts of Customs and Excise and the immigration service have been merged into the new body.
Why is it being set up?
The Home Office says the "elite force" will use "hi-tech, 21st-century technology to uncover the new wave of crime bosses". But at the time of their announcement in 2004, the plans were widely seen as a response to criticism over recent high-profile blunders by local forces and lack of coordination between the different agencies.
How many people work for it?
There will be 4,300 staff, including 120 officers based in 40 countries around the world. NCIS formerly employed 1,200 staff, while the NCS had 1,330 detectives and 420 support staff. Even counting in officers transferred from Customs and Excise and the immigration service, Soca will have a considerably bigger force than its predecessors.
How much will it cost?
The government will fund Soca to the tune of £400m a year - again, considerably more than the £230m that was spent on NCIS and the NCS.
Who will run it?
An 11-person board has been appointed by the Home Office, chaired by former MI5 director-general Sir Stephen Lander. Former NCS director-general Bill Hughes will remain as director-general of Soca.
What powers will it have?
Though Soca officers will not be part of the police service, they will have the same powers as police and will identify themselves as police during raids. They will also have some additional powers, including access to "supergrass" regulations allowing criminals to get more lenient sentences, or even immunity from prosecution, in return for information on their bosses. Courts will also be allowed to order former offenders to disclose up to 20 years' worth of bank statements to prove that they have gone straight.
What will its priorities be?
Home secretary Charles Clarke has specified that its main responsibilities should be drug trafficking and organised immigration crime, in that order. Soca's board plans to allocate 40% of resources to drug trafficking, 25% to immigration, 10% to individual and private sector fraud, and 15% to other types of organised crime. An additional 10% of resources will go on helping other law-enforcement agencies with their work.
How will we know if it's any good?
The home secretary specified four criteria to judge Soca's performance: trends in the harm caused by organised crime; evidence that organised criminals are finding the UK a less attractive place to operate; improving understanding of organised crime; and meeting targets on asset recovery from operations.
How does it compare to national law enforcement agencies in other countries?
The new force is already being seen as a British version of the federal bureau of investigations (FBI), the investigative arm of the US department of justice. The FBI has 11,000 special agents and 16,000 professional support personnel. Its headquarters in Washington oversees 56 field offices and about 400 satellite offices, known as resident agencies.
Its mission statement includes upholding the law through the investigation of violations of federal criminal law, and protecting the US from foreign intelligence and terrorist activities. It does not see itself as a national police force, but as "one of 32 federal agencies with law enforcement responsibilities", and as such, it is directed to investigate specific cases by the justice department. It can also assist other forces with fingerprint identification, laboratory examinations and police training.
• Blair launches Soca to smash
global crime cartels
• Police, immigration and customs join forces
• Police, immigration and customs join forces
A target list of the 1,000 most wanted organised gangs operating in Britain has been drawn up by a new FBI-style crime fighting agency.
Launching the Serious and Organised Crime Agency - Soca - the prime minister said the organisation would "make life hell" for the country's most sophisticated and brutal criminals.
"We are not dealing with shambling amateurs. It is a global business, its captains are practical and we have to be equally tough, intelligent, broad-ranging and rigorous in return," said Mr Blair.
Some of the criminal cartels Soca is up against are bigger than the 4,200-strong agency itself, said Sir Stephen Lander, the Soca chairman. The agency will be the first in the country to combine the powers of police, customs and immigration officers.
But staff will have no special powers over and above what is available to other law enforcement agencies, and Soca's director, Bill Hughes, previously head of the National Crime Squad, said only the most urgent of operations would take place without the knowledge and usually the involvement of local police.
Mr Blair highlighted recent legislation in four areas which he said would help Soca's work. They are formalised supergrass deals, disclosure notices to make suspects answer questions, enhanced criminal asset confiscation laws and financial reporting orders to enable courts to check on possible criminal earnings.
Mr Blair pledged to monitor Soca's progress and introduce more powers if necessary. "I want to make it quite clear that if, on the basis of the work we now do, we find we need to go further, we will go further," he said. "There is absolutely nothing, in my view, that should come before the basic liberties of people in this country to be freed from the tyranny of this type of organised crime."
The Soca annual plan, published yesterday, said the agency would devote 40% of its operational effort on drug trafficking, 25% on people trafficking, 10% on fraud, including emerging trends in e-crime, and 15% on other organised crime.
Organised crime is estimated to cost the UK more than £20bn - or £300 a person - every year. According to the Home Office, the main crime bosses based in Britain are worth of about £440m, roughly equal to Soca's £400m annual budget.
The home secretary, Charles Clarke, gave examples of human trafficking and drug smuggling networks which involved huge numbers of footsoldiers and dozens of countries. "We shouldn't underestimate the scale of what we have to do," he said. "We have to attack these organisations in a complex, systematic, targeted and focused way."
Sir Stephen, a former MI5 chief, said his staff had spent the past 18 months analysing intelligence on criminal gangs so they could target them accurately. "It is a sizeable number. Some of these organisations deploy very considerable numbers and have very considerable wealth. We have to be more ambitious."
Soca will have up to 140 staff based in around 40 countries worldwide, many embedded in foreign agencies, like the US FBI and Drugs Enforcement Agency, which will have a reciprocal arrangement with Soca to enable quick and efficient intelligence-sharing.
Sir Stephen admitted that the formation of Soca had been "quite a bumpy time" because of the merger of several culturally different law enforcement agencies - the former National Crime Squad, National Criminal Intelligence Service, the investigative wings of customs and immigration, and civilian experts.
Mr Clarke said plans to restructure 43 English and Welsh police forces into less than half that number would complement Soca's work.
The plans followed a constabulary inspectorate report which identified significant weaknesses in tackling organised crime and it was for this very reason the mergers must go ahead as soon as possible, he added.
Rosie
Cowan, April 4, 2006
Those behind Soca don't like being called the British FBI but its creation does mark the introduction of some US-style ideas of justice into the British legal system. For the Serious and Organised Crime Agency isn't just about bringing together 4,200 police, customs, immigration and MI5 officers into a more sophisticated and integrated body to tackle the £20bn-a-year trade in organised crime. They will also have new powers at their disposal.
The most important stems directly from the American experience in tackling the mafia and major drug gangs - the formal introduction of plea bargaining and a system of "supergrasses" into the criminal justice system in England and Wales. The prime minister was in no doubt yesterday that the offer to turn Queen's evidence - immunity or a reduced sentence in return for testifying against fellow gang members - was the best way to breed uncertainty in any criminal organisation. There is a promise of new safeguards against corruption.
Soca has to persuade the public that not only footsoldiers, such as street dealers, but also middle-ranking organised crime figures involved in people trafficking and heroin smuggling should be free to walk the streets because their evidence has put away more significant crime figures. Harm reduction, as it is called, is at the centre of Soca's strategy - a fundamental shift in tactics from arresting every drug dealer or seizing every shipment. It is regarded as more important to break up criminal networks than to secure a short-term publicity coup by making quick arrests. It works for the FBI because it makes sure it gets the headlines for every operation so it gets funding.
But Soca will have to build new partnerships with the new regional police "superforces", customs and tax investigators, and private businesses. An FBI-style strategy of claiming credit for everything they are involved in will get up their partners' noses.
New crime agency to tackle
organisers of £40bn trade in drugs,
fraud & smuggled prostitutes
Detectives will start this week to target 1,600 individuals identified as masterminding Britain's biggest organised crime syndicates.
Tomorrow the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) kicks off a series of operations against a list of criminal suspects responsible for orchestrating a £40bn trade in drugs, corruption and human trafficking.
The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, will launch the agency, dubbed Britain's FBI. Its immediate priority will be to target hundreds of suspects whose 'enormous' wealth is believed to have been generated from the proceeds of forgery factories, people-smuggling and drug cartels. Most are understood to be laundering money through seemingly legitimate premises.
One of Britain's biggest drugs gangs was recently found to have laundered £20m a year through two rundown cafés as it smuggled heroin from Colombia via Spain to Britain. Soca will be targeting men like Darren Owen from south Wales, who was recently convicted for running a drugs empire that operated like a legitimate business complete with regional managers. Others include Viktoras Larcenko, a Lithuanian gangster who made up to £100,000 a month smuggling young eastern European women into Britain for prostitution, and Jesús Aníbal Ruiz Henao who laundered millions of pounds of drugs money through a travel agent.
Based in 43 secret locations across Britain, Soca has more than 4,000 officers who will use sweeping new powers to seize criminal assets, bar suspects from Britain and strike Queen's Evidence deals with informants.
Amid intelligence that the proceeds from organised crime in Britain are growing, senior officers are worried about the emergence of potential new markets for gangs. These include the 2012 London Olympics and this summer's World Cup in Germany, both of which could become a focus for criminals targeting markets for prostitutes, drugs and fraud as well as lucrative government contracts.
Alongside tackling human trafficking, Soca's main objective will be targeting international drug cartels. The chairman of Soca, and former head of MI5, Sir Stephen Lander, said narcotics syndicates were becoming increasingly sophisticated. 'We need to learn more on the major drugs industry,' he said. 'It looks like the cocaine, heroin and synthetic drugs market will get worse.'
Detectives for Soca have identified a list of countries responsible for exporting different types of criminal expertise to Britain. Vietnamese gangs, for instance, operate hundreds of marijuana farms across London. Thailand dominates the market in forged documents and passports, while Triad groups from China are mainly involved in human trafficking.
Soca, which will have armed units and electronics surveillance experts, will incorporate the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service and key functions of the immigration and customs services. One crucial element will be Soca's authority to reach written agreements with suspects who testify against leading crime figures.
A specialist team of 500 officers will have the duty of following suspicious financial transactions. Lander added: 'We will be chasing money, freezing assets.'
Up to 140 British crime fighters will be based abroad working for Britain's new equivalent of the FBI - the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) - which officially opens it doors on Monday morning.
The unprecedented scale of international collaboration is part of a drive to globalise the fight against organised crime, intercepting people traffickers and drug smugglers in the countries they pass through to reach Britain, the new chief of Soca, Sir Stephen Lander told the Guardian.
Some of Soca's staff overseas will be carrying out intelligence duties, others will work with local authorities in places like Afghanistan and Colombia, where heroin and cocaine production are rife. Others will be embedded in foreign law enforcement agencies, which will reciprocate with officers in the UK.
"We think we will have the second largest law enforcement overseas network in the world, second only to the US DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency]," the former M15 chief explained.
Many of the 140 being sent overseas will go to the US, where some are already with the DEA, others to eastern Europe, from where traffickers procure thousands of women each year to work in the sex trade around the world.
"We're doing a lot of work with the Balkans and eastern Europe as regards trafficked women and labourers and we want to work with the transit countries to see what we can do to stop them being moved through," said Bill Hughes, Soca's director, who previously headed the National Crime Squad. "Globalisation, the internet and cheap travel have made it so much easier to conduct the business of crime at one remove. We can't operate in isolation, we have to build up alliances in other countries."
The international strategy epitomises the new holistic approach to crime fighting by Soca, which will merge the National Crime Squad, National Criminal Intelligence Service, parts of Customs and Immigration, civilian computer and financial experts, and police officers seconded from forces throughout the UK. Crime cartels cost the UK £40bn a year. Soca will be able to use a range of methods, including asset stripping and other regulatory tools, as well as targeting crooked officers and lawyers.
"You can slice this any number of ways," said Sir Stephen. "Who are the kingpins and main profiteers? How do they do business? Do they rely on corrupt police officers or solicitors? We've constructed an organisation that allows us to cross-target a range of things and we've been doing a lot to ensure Soca is more than a sum of its parts."
Organised crime, he said, was all about making profit and combating it required a cool, corporate-minded approach. "It's about making the UK as unattractive a business proposition as possible for criminals, disrupting their activities, putting them out of business and reducing market opportunities."
"In the past, we tended to think the case ended when the cell door slammed shut," said Mr Hughes. "Of course it doesn't, it's about bringing down the whole structure. There will be people who will go to prison for a long time, but for others out there there may be a quicker way to put them out of business. In some cases, a stroke of the regulatory pen could avoid a criminal taskforce chasing its tail forever."
While Soca's work will be boosted by some new criminal justice measures, such as US-type informer plea bargains, Sir Stephen insisted: "We haven't got a load of new powers, we're simply an extra layer pulling together existing resources and levering others.
"We will consult as to how leads will be pursued, who is best placed to pursue them and in what type of operation, and if appropriate, hand cases over to other agencies." Mr Hughes quoted US president Harry Truman: "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
MI5
Press Release
The Security Service became involved in countering serious crime in
1996. Since that time we have deployed our full range of skills and
resources, used traditionally against the terrorist and espionage
targets, to combat the threat from serious crime. As a result we have been successfully involved in a number of complex and major law enforcement investigations.
In contrast with our national security work, we have not acted independently in the investigation of serious crime, but have become involved only when tasked by law enforcement agencies. We have only accepted "tasking" on a case if we assessed, in consultation with the relevant law enforcement agencies, that our skills, knowledge and capabilities were likely to have a significant impact on the specific investigation.
Tackling Serious Crime
Most of our serious crime work to date has been in support of countering illegal drug importations, but we have also made important contributions in the fields of illegal immigration, arms trafficking and excise fraud.
Intelligence provided by the Service since 1996 has contributed to the arrests and subsequent prosecutions of leading drugs traffickers. There have also been significant seizures of Class A drugs, illegal firearms and criminal assets partly as a result of our support for law enforcement investigations.
More recently we have contributed to the strategic assessment of the trends in, and factors behind, serious crime. Our assessments have supported the government and law enforcement agencies in defining strategic direction.
The Serious Organised Crime Agency
In February 2004, the Home Secretary announced the formation of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). This body brings together the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), the National Crime Squad (NCS), the investigative and intelligence work of HM Revenue and Customs on serious drug trafficking and the recovery of related criminal assets, and the Home Office's responsibilities for dealing with organised immigration crime.
The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 came into force on 11 April 2005. A Home Office press release summarises the main provisions of the Act, which establishes SOCA and sets out its constitution, functions, general powers and its relationship with Ministers.
SOCA became operational on 3 April 2006. We have a close working relationship with the new Agency, which is headed by a former Director General of the Security Service, Sir Stephen Lander.
Sir Stephen Lander (1947- )Sir Stephen joined the Service in 1975 and became Director General in 1996, serving in that capacity until his retirement from the Service in 2002. He subsequently became the Law Society's Independent Commissioner. In 2004 he became the Chairman-Designate of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, a new body which is due to become operational from 1 April 2006.
See also
MI5 Directors General
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