AML / CFT: UK authorities target wives in money laundering cases

It's been a very long time coming: when the UK first put its counter-money laundering laws in place, Nigel Morris-Cotterill, who is now Head, The Anti Money Laundering Network, the ultimate parent of BankingInsuranceSecurities.Com, warned that wives and girlfriends of criminals were at risk of prosecution.

That was in the early 1990s.

Now, after a first conviction of the wife of a member of a drugs running gang, prosecutors have had a second success - against the wife of another member of the same gang.

Fiona Blake laundered the proceeds of her husband Craig's drugs trade through her personal account. She has been sentenced to three years in jail. Last year, Friday Quick (honestly, that's her name) was sentenced to 18 months in jail for the same offence.

Prosecutions against spouses are difficult: they cannot be compelled to give evidence against each other. But the case stacked up on the simple basis that the wives had insufficient provable income to justify the amounts of money passing through their accounts.

Bizarrely, a statement from Matt Horne of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, hinted that there are degrees of laundering and that living the good life using proceeds is in some way less of an offence than being involved in a laundering scheme. He said "This is not simply a case of enjoying a lifestyle funded by serious criminality. Fiona Blake took an important role in attempting to conceal the profits of a major drug-dealing organisation."

The law does not make that distinction either in the phrasing of the statute or in sentencing: the penalties set out in the Proceeds of Crime Act are the same for laundering, however it is done. And there is no evidence that judges would take a less serious view of a wife who spends lavishly knowing or having reasonable cause to suspect that the money she is spending arises from criminal conduct.

Fiona Blake takes the number of people convicted in relation to the crime network's activities to 27. She will now be subject to a confiscation investigation concerning money and assets acquired through criminal activity.

Made up of three regional gangs working together, the drugs network is believed to have trafficked around half-a-tonne of cocaine into the UK.

Due diligence information: Fiona Blake: Age 40, of Huntly Road, Bournemouth.