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May 22, 1973 Industrial Relations — Unfair dismissal — Jurisdiction — Employee dismissed — Four employees at termination of employment — Three employed for more than 13 weeks — Fourth employed for less than 13 weeks — Whether less than four employees “who” had been continuously employed — Industrial Relations Act, 1971(c.72), s.27( l )(a).

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/eb025849. When citing the article, please cite: Richard Alexander, (1998), “Do the UKʼs Provisions for Confiscation Orders Breach the European Convention on Human Rights?”, Journal of Financial Crime, Vol. 5 Iss: 4, pp. 374 - 381.

The Council Directive on prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering was passed on 10th June, 1991, and the anti money laundering legislation of the Member States of the European Union (EU) is now largely based on it. It had its origins in the growing awareness from the mid‐1980s onwards that money laundering was an international problem and therefore international action was needed if it was to be combated effectively. This had led to the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, adopted in 1988 and generally referred to as the Vienna Convention, and the Council of Europe Convention on the laundering, tracing, seizure and confiscation of the proceeds of crime, drawn up in 1990 and generally referred to as the Strasbourg Convention. Both the Vienna and the Strasbourg Conventions are explicitly referred to in the Preamble to the Directive. Other activity had included a study by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which published its report, with recommendations in 1991. That said, certain countries had already taken some action against money laundering: in the UK for example, the laundering of the proceeds of drug trafficking had been a criminal offence, carrying up to 14 years' imprisonment, since 1986.

Discusses the position of whistleblowers who report their suspicions of crimes like money laundering; individuals with inside knowledge are often crucial to fighting such crimes, but their own positions are far from strong. Asks who are the whistleblowers; they may be employees of the same company as the fraudster or money launderer, or they may be an auditor or accountant. Considers the pressures on them to remain silent: the threat of violence or of loss of employment. Shows how each of these threats needs to be countered if genuine whistleblowers are to be confident enough to disclose information: the necessary measures are witness protection programmes and specific employment protection measures for whistleblowers such as those in the 1998 Public Interest Disclosure Act.

For just over a decade now, it has been a principle enshrined in UK legislation that a criminal should not be allowed to retain the proceeds of his offences. The main impetus was the theory that if crime genuinely did not pay, there would be no incentive to commit it and therefore that the confiscation of the proceeds would prove a greater deterrent than a mere sentence of imprisonment. There was also the view, strongly supported by the public, that those who commit serious crimes should not be able simply to sit out a given length of time in prison certain in the knowledge that when they came out, they could look forward to a comfortable existence on their ill‐gotten gains.

Considers first the 1993 Money Laundering Regulations, which were introduced to implement the European Union’s 1991 Money Laundering Directive and were addressed specifically to the financial sector; they were amended by the Second Money Laundering Regulations 2001 [sic] to include money transmission offices and bureaux de change, and the 2003 Regulations followed. Details the types of business which the Regulations cover, and continues with what the Regulations require: customer identification, record keeping and training. Focuses on the identification requirement, which means that the institution must have procedures for obtaining satisfactory evidence of identity from the customer.