Conversation:

Should I find this worrying?



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4987874.stm

I picked up on this on another MB, which unfortunately degenerated into hysterics and flame wars. Hopefully Blues Shark can shed some light on this, but apparently it can be applied thus:

Police find around £5000 in the glove compartment of your car. They confiscate it and give you 48 hrs to prove you came by it legitimately.

What happened to "Innocent until proven guilty"?

"Police find around £5000 in the glove compartment of your car. They confiscate it and give you 48 hrs to prove you came by it legitimately.

What happened to "Innocent until proven guilty"?"

You show them your payslip and they give it back.

My gran had over £12000 hidden on top of her wardrobe, savings accumulated over the years. If the police had stumbled upon that, how could she "prove" it was legitimately hers

Don't get me wrong, I see where this is coming from. We probably all know stories of the local neer-do-well driving round in flash cars, in a big house and lots of foreign holidays with no visible means of support, but this seems to be a sweeping power reliant on the discretion of the police.

This came in with the Proceeds From Crime act - because drug dealers tend to make cash transactions, it is often difficult to track their money.

This was Tony's idea to defeat them - we'll take your cash unless you can prove its legit.

Well, *apart* from the odd old lady with cash under the bed she's been putting away for years (who I'd *guess* was safe as long as she wasn't also running a crack den), most people with large amounts of cash they can't account for would seem likely to have got hold of it from crimnal enterprise, or as earned income they've been keeping from the tax-man.

If they confiscate your funds and you're not actually charged with anything do you still get legal aide to recover the money?
It seems if you've got nothing to hide then you'll take it to magistartes and have your day in court that way.

It's perhaps only worrying from a slippery-slope/thin-end-of-the-wedge arguement.

I actually think £5,000 is a thin wedge - were it £25,000 I would be prepared to say - yep looks dodgy, but £5K ? - I might be on my way to buy a second-hand car I'd been saving for.

Conversly - you could be on your way to buy a stolen car that a bit more flashy than that second-hand on the forecourt. Or be going home after selling fake DVDs on market stall.

Jeez, you guys only just noticed this? It became law, what, 3 or 4 years ago.

The Police don't have the manpower or the desire to break down your grannies door to confiscate her life savings. They use this Act against targeted suspects. It's a re-active, not pro-active law.

Morning Blues,

Clearly the guys haven't been driving around with £5K in th eglovebox - until recently?

Novo

Again, I'd have to ask what you've done to warrant the police spending very precious man hours having you under sufficient surveillance to justify launching a POCA Application for the £5K in your glove box to be of interest to them.

Yes, you should be concerned.

Mainly because of the innocence/guilt angle.

Whilst Blues makes a valid point for today and in day to day life, the police not currently having the resources to proactively apply this (or even to misuse this!) is not a good enough reason to say this is OK.

If you can't prove someone is guilty then either a) they ain't guilty and you got it wrong or b) you need to improve your detection and investigation procedures.
What you should not do is shift the onus to your chosen suspect and ask them to prove their innocence. That seems like a lazy quick fix.

I also find the following quote from the end of your link more than a little troubling:

'"Even going to prison doesn't reduce the debt they have to pay back.
"It stays with them for life - even legitimately acquired assets can be seized to make up any shortfall."'

"while magistrates can order cash to be forfeited without the holder being charged or prosecuted for an offence. "

It's that bit I find a bit worrying. By all means, seize the assets of convicted criminals, but the assests of someone who hasn't even been *charged*?

The point being that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of non-convicted non-charged 'Mr Bigs' out there who simply laugh in the face of the law whilst peddling drugs in your community through a network of weak minded fools.

They own property abroad. They drive very, very flash cars. '*Everybody* in the community knows who they are but they also know, as do the police that there is no way these people will ever be found in court, even for a parking ticket.

Why not make them explain where there multi-million pound life style is funded from?

And that's the point. They can still have their day in court, produce the paperwork that proves they are entitled to that £25k worth of diamonds in their safe deposit box despite being on the dole for 18 years.

There still has to be an evidential finding by a migistrate or a Crown Court, and there has to be pretty solid evidence presented to a Judge by the Police before the warrants for the searches in bank accounts and the like can even go ahead.

It certainly isn't as simple as manthere seem to think - ie Plod turn up and say, "ere Judge, we don't like the look of him, give us his life savings".

If someone can't account at all for a large amount of property from declared income, there would seem to be some case for the revenue to get involved.
If the sums are such that explanations merely involving 'forgetting' to pay tax on otherwise legitimate income don't make sense, then criminality would seem to be a likely explanation.

In any country where there is a tax system, there must be *some* kind of obligation on people to explain where their money has come from if TPTB have some reason to suspect the source isn't kosher.
If someone is given the choice of
a) Explaining how they legally aquired assets without breaking tax laws.
b) Explaining how the legally aquired assets but then didn't make the right declarations.
c) Explaining how the assets are the proceeds of crime
d) Explaining nothing

with a) leading to no action, b) leading to action for tax evasion, with some assets likely to be lost, and c) and d) risking losing all the assets, most people who could choose a) or b) would do so, unless they'd been evading so much tax that the costs of admitting it exceed the assets they *think* the government can locate.

I'm trying to think of scenarios where someone would be likely to be found in posession of assets they really own, haven't evaded tax on, yet can't explain.

In fact, what puzzles me is how someone with a big enough sum to be worth confiscating can manage to avoid some kind of tax-evasion prosecution as well as confiscation?
Isn't that what Al Capone got caught for?

There are several issues here.

Firstly we have the appeal to the emotions and nimbies argument about local crime lords getting away with it.

If someone is committing a crime and people know about it then it is obviously detectable. If the current procedures and resources preclude us from doing that, then the procedures and resources should be improved until we can. We should not be introducing legislation which is easily abusable and that circumvents little things like proving the person actually had anything to do with it.

If the Police can't prove it, and no one else can either, then on what grounds does the state think it has the right to interrupt and negatively influence that persons life?

Hi Blues, thanks for the perspective.

<>

Yup, totally agree. BUT, they are still breaking the law albeit cleverly and certainly too cleverly for the Plods. This law seems to be a cop-out for dim cops.

"You're breaking the law Sunny Jim. You know it & we know it but we're too thick to work it out. Luckily we have this shiny new law here wot says we can put a 1000 year old legal system to one side."

Lots of people deal in cash. 3.5 million people in the UK do not have a bank account. Almost 50% do not have a credit card. Anti-smoking laws and Traffic Laws are in danger of criminalising a fair proportion of the population. It seems the average Joe is far more likely nowadays to get a knock on the door from the Plods. If so, it might be a case of "Quick, hide the cash before the Cops see it"

Has this Government set up a "Wish Tank" where they can sit around saying, "Gee, wouldn't it be nice to have a law against ?"

Is 'my nan gave me the tin of cash from under her bed when she died - turns out she'd got 200k in there' a reasonable explanation?

The tax man wants to know what happened to his Inheritance tax, in that senario.

When it comes to gangs, it's not necessarily a matter of police being thick, but of people being too scared to be witnesses.

I'm not into intrusive government, but what's the problem with asking someone "Where did you get the money for that house or sports car?".
It's no more intrusive than having the Inland Revenue knowing how much someone on PAYE gets paid every month, expecting someone self-employed to fill in a tax return, or having financial institutions report suspicious transactions.
Assets simply are not a purely private matter even for the law-abiding in taxpaying economies. I certainly don't see any reason why someone with reasonable suspicion about their activities should be able to be more private about their finances than I am allowed to be.