§ Lord Roperasked Her Majesty's Government:
How many formal inquiries for information on financial fraud (Commissions rogatoires internationales) were received from each of the other member states of the European Union in 1999; and how many have been replied to. [HL2776]
§ Lord Bassam of BrightonThe numbers ofCommissions rogatoires (requests) for information on fraud received, actioned and completed in 1999 are shown in the tables.
Requests sent to the Home Office are dealt with by the United Kingdom Central Authority (UKCA) for Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, in the Organised and International Crime Directorate of the Home Office.
The UKCA database does not distinguish between different types of fraud cases, so the figures cover not only financial fraud, but other types of fraud as well, such as fraudulent trading.
As requests for asset restraint and confiscation may be made in the context of financial fraud, these have been shown as well.
"Actioned" denotes action taken by UKCA to forward the request to the appropriate agency, be it a police force, Customs and Excise, the Serious Fraud Office, a magistrates' court, or—less frequently— another agency. At the same time as actioning requests, the UKCA sends an acknowledgment to the requesting state, notifying it of the action taken.
The UKCA has a target for actioning incoming requests of 20 working days. Therefore those requests received after early December will not have been actioned until early in 2000. Similarly, the figures for requests actioned will cover some requests received at the end of 1998. This explains the discrepancy between the "Received" and "Actioned" figures.
3WAHow long requests take to be executed by these agencies is beyond the Home Office's control and depends on a wide variety of factors—for example, the complexity of the request, the availability of witnesses, the level of detail in the original request. The figures in the "Completed" columns will therefore represent a substantial number of requests received in 1998 or even earlier.
Requests for Assistance in Fraud Cases 1999 Country Requests received Requests actioned Requests completed Austria 6 6 10 Belgium 11 11 11 Denmark 10 11 12 Finland 6 6 6 France 54 51 48 Germany 32 38 40 Greece — — 5 Ireland — 1 1 Italy 15 15 24 Luxembourg 3 3 1 Netherlands 18 16 17 Portugal 4 6 1 Spain 37 36 22 Sweden 3 4 5 Total 199 204 203
Requests for Asset Restraint/Confiscation 1999 Country Requests received Requests actioned Requests completed Austria — — — Belgium — — — Denmark — — — Finland — — — France — — — Germany 1 — 1 Greece — — — Ireland — — — Italy — — 2 Luxembourg — — 1 Netherlands 2 2 2 Portugal 1 1 — Spain — — 2 Sweden — — — Total 4 3 8