National Crime Agency
The National Crime Agency is the UK's lead agency for tackling serious and organised crime, including money laundering and terrorist financing. The NCA's UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU) receives all Suspicious Activity Reports filed by regulated businesses and uses them to build intelligence pictures that support criminal investigations across UK law enforcement.
SARs are filed via the NCA's SAR Online portal. The NCA does not investigate every SAR — most are intelligence-only — but failure to file when grounds exist is itself a criminal offence under POCA s.330.
Other terms that go with National Crime Agency
A Suspicious Activity Report is a formal disclosure made to the National Crime Agency (NCA) when a person in a regulated sector knows or suspects that someone is engaged in money laundering or terrorist financing. Filing a SAR provides a defence against money laundering offences. Failure to file when there is grounds to do so is itself a criminal offence.
A Money Laundering Reporting Officer is the individual within a regulated business who is responsible for receiving internal suspicious activity reports, deciding whether to submit external SARs to the National Crime Agency, and overseeing the firm's AML compliance programme. Appointing an MLRO is a legal requirement for businesses within the scope of MLR 2017. In SRA-regulated law firms, the MLRO role sits alongside the Money Laundering Compliance Officer (MLCO) — the MLRO owns SAR reporting under POCA; the MLCO owns the firm's overall AML system under MLR 2017.
A Defence Against Money Laundering — often called a 'consent SAR' — is a request to the NCA under POCA s.335 (or s.336 for terrorism) for permission to undertake an act that would otherwise be a principal money laundering offence. Approval is implied if the NCA does not respond within 7 working days (the 'notice period'); a refusal can be extended for a further 31 days (the 'moratorium period').
Put National Crime Agency into practice with Certivus
Knowing the term is the first step. Certivus gives you the workflows — client intake, CDD, EDD, PEP and sanctions screening, audit-ready records — to apply it across every client.
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