By Helena Wood and Karen Baxter

In 2022, escalating levels of fraud and the spotlight placed on the UK’s role in Russia-related money laundering have given rise to a growing recognition of economic crime as a national security threat and the need to reform the UK’s economic crime policing response. This report seeks to contribute to that debate by proposing a national security-based model that draws on the key characteristics of three other national security policing responses – counterterrorism, serious and organised crime, and cybercrime – and adapts these to the specific challenges and context of economic crime policing. The proposed model establishes a new set of core functions. It builds a strong central intelligence function, backed by a single policing command structure, to deliver the operational response via new proactive and ring-fenced investigative units at the regional tier of policing, aligned to existing serious and organised crime policing structures. 

London: RUSI -  Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, 2022.  40p.