Page:ISC Russia Report.pdf/42

 Economic Area (EEA), someone involved in serious crime, or an individual or entity connected to such people. The Security Minister told the Committee that Unexplained Wealth Orders were acting as a deterrent:

"We know from both intelligence and open source that people are approaching financial advisers about how to get their money out of Britain as a result of these Unexplained Wealth Orders, and I think you will see them being used more going forward."

However, the Director-General of the NCA cautioned that:

"… unexplained wealth does have to be unexplained and, unfortunately … Russians have been investing for a long period of time … you can track back and you can see how they will make a case in court that their wealth is not unexplained, it is very clearly explained."

As a result, it appears that Unexplained Wealth Orders may not be that useful in relation to the Russian elite. Moreover, there are practical issues around their use, as the NCA explained:

"We are, bluntly, concerned about the impact on our budget, because these are wealthy people with access to the best lawyers and the case that we have had a finding on … has been through every bit of court in the land, and I've got a very good legal team based within the National Crime Agency but they had a lot of resource dedicated out of my relatively small resource envelope on that work."

120.There appear to be similar concerns in relation to sanctions. The NCA told us that sanctions have "a powerful impact" on members of the Russian elite and their professional enablers, and "provide a significant primary disruption when imposed, and also open up a range of effective secondary disruptions through sanctions evasion offences". However, the NCA also underlined that there are several ways in which the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 is too restrictive. The NCA outlined changes that it would wish to see to the legislation:


 * including serious and organised crime as grounds for introducing sanctions; and


 * providing for Closed Material Proceedings to protect sensitive intelligence in the granting of, and any appeal against, sanctions (the Special Immigration Appeals Commission procedures offer a useful model for this).

We note that the Foreign Secretary stated that he is "quite enthusiastic about sanctions against individuals because we are all quite sceptical that sanctions against countries have