Case Explained: Suspicious Activity Reports – National Crime Agency – Legal Perspective

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The value of SARs

The value of SARs is wide-reaching. SARs intelligence has been instrumental in locating sex offenders, tracing murder suspects, identifying subjects suspected of being involved in watching indecent footage of children online and showing the movement of young women being trafficked into the UK to work in the sex industry.

Some SARs provide immediate opportunities to stop crime and arrest offenders, others help uncover potential criminality that needs to be investigated, while others provide intelligence useful in the future. All contribute to the UK’s strategic threat assessment.

Information provided through SARs, including details of the reporter’s money laundering or terrorist financing suspicions, as well as contact details, alias identities, investment activity, bank accounts and other assets, can lead to the instigation of new investigations or enhance on-going operations.

SARs can help identify changes in the nature or prevalence of types of organised crime, e.g. mortgage and boiler room frauds. This enables detection and prevention activity including the issue of alerts to businesses at risk from such activity.

Multiple SARs on the same subject or company can identify new targets for operational activity. Information leads to the recovery of the proceeds of crime by assisting in restraint orders, confiscation orders and cash seizures.

SARs provide intelligence about criminal methods, contribute to the UK’s understanding of crime and inform strategies to reduce the impact of crime.

SARs can also help establish a geographical picture or pattern of the vulnerability of a particular sector or product, and can be used in the analysis of suspicious activity before and after a specific event such as a terrorist incident.

The UK Suspicious Activity Reporting regime

Illicit finance and money laundering underpin and enable most forms of organised crime. This activity allows criminals and terrorists to further their operations and conceal their assets, which impacts the national security of the United Kingdom. This is where the SAR regime comes in.

Suspicious activity reports, or SARs, can be submitted by any organisation or individual who knows or suspects that another organisation or individual is engaged in money laundering or terrorist financing.

SARs are submitted to the UKFIU, which is part of the NCA. The UKFIU has sole national responsibility for receiving, analysing and disseminating SARs in the United Kingdom.

Submitting a SAR provides law enforcement with valuable information about potential criminality. It may also provide you and your organisation with a defence to a principal money laundering or terrorist financing offence. By submitting a valid SAR to the UKFIU, you will be complying with your legal obligations to report suspicious activity under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA) or Terrorism Act 2000 (TACT).

Organisations and individuals falling within the regulated sector have a legal obligation to submit SARs, and there are specific requirements relating to the minimum information SARs should contain.

Failure to submit a SAR when there is a legal obligation to do so could result in both individuals and organisations being prosecuted for criminal offences and/or facing action from their regulator. The offences of failing to disclose come under sections 330-331 of POCA and sections 19 and 21A of TACT, and the penalties for conviction on indictment are up to five years’ imprisonment, a fine, or both.

All reporters must also be aware of the offences under sections 333A and 342 of POCA and sections 21D and 39 of TACT relating to ‘tipping off’ and ‘prejudicing an investigation’.

If you are unsure how the SAR regime applies to you or your organisation, talk to your regulator, supervisor, professional body or trade association, or seek legal advice.

SAR reporting in Northern Ireland

Part 7 of POCA applies throughout the UK; this aspect was not amended by Schedule 24, Crime and Courts Act 2013. Therefore, POCA applies as it did before the NCA came into being. Notwithstanding other aspects of how the NCA operates in Northern Ireland, reports under Part 7 of POCA should therefore continue to be made to the UKFIU within the NCA.

How SARs are used

A single SAR is often used multiple times by different users for different purposes. For example, the information within a SAR may inform HM Revenue & Customs about taxation, local police about fraud or theft and a government department about an issue or weakness in a financial product.

The UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU) receives more than 850,000 SARs a year. SARs are stored on a secure central database, which currently holds over 4.5 million SARs. We analyse the SARs to extract strategic and tactical intelligence, and identify the most sensitive SARs to send to the appropriate organisations for investigation. The remainder are made available to UK law enforcement bodies via a secure channel (with the exception of SARs in certain sensitive categories).

Due to the sensitive nature of law enforcement investigations, reporters of SARs are not routinely be provided with updates on their SARs and may only become aware of the existence of operational activity if law enforcement requests further information.

Submitting a SAR

Suspicious Activity Reports should be submitted using the SAR Portal. The SAR Portal is the most secure and efficient way to submit a SAR. You will receive an acknowledgement and reference number following submission, and reports can be made 24/7.

Contacting the UKFIU

The NCA is unable to give advice on whether or not an individual or organisation should submit a SAR. For queries of this nature, please contact the appropriate anti-money laundering supervisor/regulator or seek independent legal advice.

SAR Confidentiality Breach Line

0207 238 1860

There is a dedicated helpline for reporting any concerns about inappropriate use of SARs (by end users) or breaches of SAR confidentiality.

This is a 24-hour line available from Monday to Sunday. This number is for reporting breaches of confidentiality only, please only contact for this purpose and not for general UKFIU and SAR queries.

If you require further information, please contact the UKFIU Information Management Team: UKFIU.InfoManagement@nca.gov.uk

General UKFIU queries and SAR Portal technical support

020 7238 8282

This is a voicemail service only; please leave a message including the date, time, contact details, and the nature of your query and a member of the team will get back to you.

If you need guidance or support on how to submit good quality SARs, or you have a query about the SARs regime, please contact: UKFIUEngagement@nca.gov.uk

If you have any technical queries about the SAR Portal, please contact: UKFIUSARs@nca.gov.uk

If you have a query regarding the disclosure of SARs during litigation or as part of a Data Subject Access Request, please contact: UKFIU.InfoManagement@nca.gov.uk

All contact regarding live DAML requests (that is, those within the 7 working day notice period) or DAMLs within the moratorium period must be directed to the DAML inbox: DAML@nca.gov.uk

UKFIU Guidance Library

UKFIU SARs Best Practice Guidance

UKFIU Guidance Videos

Home Office Circulars

SARs in Action magazine

The UKFIU Podcasts

The UKFIU Spotify (audio)

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UKFIU Reporter Booklets

SARs Annual Reports 

Documents for manual reporting