A U.K. public-private partnership set up last year to tackle financial crime took its first major action Thursday by freezing nearly 100 bank accounts suspected of being used to launder millions of pounds for crime syndicates. The U.K. National Economic Crime Centre, or NECC, which includes compliance officers working alongside regulators and investigators under the supervision of the National Crime Agency, or NCA, began operations in October with the task of coordinating the "overall law-enforcement response" to large-scale money laundering, fraud and other financial crimes. On Thursday, investigators working through the NECC simultaneously petitioned six courts across the United Kingdom...
The National Crime Agency of the United Kingdom issued a press release announcing the freezing of 95 bank accounts suspected of laundering an estimated £3.6 million.