International Cooperation (From The Regulation and Prevention of Economic Crime Internationally, P 115-134, 1995, Jonathan Reuvid, ed. -- See NCJ-160747)

• NCJ Number: 160751
• Author(s): J Reuvid
• Date Published: 1995
• Length: 20 pages
• Sale Source: Kogan Page Ltd
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This chapter examines the various means nations have used to cooperate in countering organized crime, with attention to efforts by the United Kingdom.

Abstract

The increasing levels of international cooperation between national police forces and customs and excise services over the last 25 years has been matched by the efforts of government departments, legislators, and judiciaries, particularly those of member states of the European Union, the G7 Group of States, the OECD and the British Commonwealth to provide the machinery for assisting each other in the pursuit of suspected and convicted criminals, their repatriation and prosecution, and the recovery of the proceeds of their crimes. Much of the efforts has focused on the pursuit of drug trafficking offenders and the confiscation of the criminal proceeds of drug trafficking and the derivative money laundering activity. The main thrust of the legislators' campaign to develop an international framework for the pursuit and prosecution of organized crime and the recovery of its proceeds has been in the drafting and enactment of a series of international conventions in preference to a proliferation of bilateral agreements. In all of this activity, the United Kingdom has played a leading role, as it has in the Ad Hoc Working Group on International Organized Crime of the European Union and formation of the National Criminal Intelligence Service as a precursor of the Maastricht Treaty requirement in this area. Since 1990, the principal international conventions that have enhanced the ability of law enforcers are the Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure, and Confiscation of the Proceed of Crime (1990); European Community Directive on the prevention of the use of the financial system for money laundering; and the European Convention on Extradition. Specific measures of British criminal legislation, mainly enacted since 1978, form the foundation for the British courts to administer the recent international conventions that relate to the confiscation of criminal proceeds and money laundering, fraud, corruption, and company law.