Too much sunlight can damage your health!

Citation

Rider, B.A.K. (2014), "Too much sunlight can damage your health!", Journal of Money Laundering Control, Vol. 17 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMLC-03-2014-0011

Too much sunlight can damage your health!

Article Type:

Editorial

From:

Journal of Money Laundering Control, Volume 17, Issue 2

The relationship of the institutions and mechanisms for raising tax and the inhibition of what is characterised as criminal or at least objectionable behaviour is a long and interesting one. Indeed, the Romans were very efficient at this, as was the Church. A not insignificant source of income to the Crown in the early Middle Ages – and in some respects well beyond – was the seizure of a felon’s property. It was also lawful for anyone representing the Crown or those who stood in place of the Crown to seize the property of those who were adjudged and even considered to be outlaws. This approach and variations of it can be discerned in many legal systems around the world, from the relatively primitive to those that we would generally consider advanced such as those in China today. Of course, such mechanisms served a feudal society, reinforcing the authority of those who stood between the Crown and the criminal and, to some degree, no doubt, gave some incentive to enforcement; as society became a little more sophisticated it became a rather more problematic tool. While the possibility of seizure of property unrelated to the specific crime existed in many European systems of law, in England it barely survived in any form that was recognisable, the traumas of the 16th century, but remained a prerogative of the Crown until the 19th century.

Nonetheless, the authority in the state to seize and effectively take ownership of the instruments of criminality remained, albeit there was seemingly always an element of proportionality. In R. Cuthbertson (1981) AC 470, the House of Lords held that property could only be forfeit where it was possible to identify something tangible that can fairly be said to relate to the crime, for example, in the case of a drugs offence, the drugs involved, the apparatus for making them, vehicles used for transporting them or “cash ready to be or having just been handed over ….” It was the restrictive scope of the then statutory provisions and the common law that led to the enactments that today relate to criminal property. Of course, it was more or less clear that the common law allowed appropriate persons, such as the police, to seek a court order freezing property that was related to a crime pending trial.

Officers of the revenue have never shown reluctance to invoke tax laws against those whose wealth represents the proceeds of crime. We all know the story which is more or less accurate of the “successes” that the G men of the US Department of Treasury chalked up against mobsters and, in particular, Al Capone during and after the prohibition era. In fact, English history has examples of officers of the Exchequer apparently using similar tactics to disrupt what were to all intents and purposes organised criminal gangs, mostly of robbers, in the 14th century. In the modern world, it is well appreciated that some of the most significant successes in depriving criminals at least, in part, of their ill-gotten gains and certainly in disrupting criminal and subversive organisations has in large measure been as a result of the involvement of the revenue. While vestiges of the traditional concern to keep the enforcement of the criminal law and the raising of proper charges to tax at least administratively separate remain, in the UK and in many other jurisdictions, there is exceptionally close cooperation.

While few would have reservations about the role of the revenue in the UK in common with, for example, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS), throwing its lot in with those seeking to protect us from criminals and terrorists, concerns are increasingly coming to the surface in regard to the role of the police in simply facilitating the assessment and collection of tax. Of course, where a tax crime is reasonably suspected, there is perhaps little justification for such caution. However, a couple of years ago when > 500 police officers descended on the providers of some 6,000 safe deposit boxes in the London area – albeit under warrant – this exercise was justified by reference to the police having strong suspicions in regard to the existence of criminal property. Their actions did identify some, albeit not significant amounts. Of course, the intelligence that was harvested may or may not have made a real difference in matters of which we will never know, and the police are reluctant to disclose these even in proceedings. What is perhaps more interesting is that allegedly the content of > 900 boxes were passed over or at least disclosed to the revenue. In the vast majority of these cases, it seems that this was done after the police had resolved that there was no evidence of any crime as such. In some cases, particularly where cash had been deposited, the revenue has raised charges.

Whatever the merits of such robust action, and there are clearly some which are in the public interest such as the seizure of seven firearms, there are issues which have been largely ignored by society. While those who order their affairs in such a manner as to provide a degree of secrecy, must obviously have some reticence in falling under the spotlight. Their reason may well not have anything to do with impropriety or crime. In this escapade the majority of safe deposit boxes contained personal and, in some cases, very private information of absolutely no proper interest to those who guard us and promote our welfare, unless, of course, they really do – as has recently been alleged by respected commentators in the Muslim community – wish to know everything about each one of us from cradle to grave!

14 February 2014

Barry Rider
Centre for Development Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK and Comparative Law, Renmin University of China, Beijing, People’s Republic of China