The UK government has published a new Anti-Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Strategy covering 2026 to 2029, committing £500 million (roughly $740 million) to expand enforcement capacity and deploy artificial intelligence against financial crime. The strategy, issued jointly by the Home Office and HM Treasury, follows a National Crime Agency estimate that more than £100 billion is laundered annually through structures based in the UK.
The funding, drawn from the Economic Crime Levy, will pay for 500 new specialist agents across enforcement bodies. In its first year, the government has named dismantling professional international money laundering networks — with particular attention to Russian-linked schemes — as the priority.
New institutional architecture
The plan creates an Asset Recovery Office within the National Crime Agency, and grants the UK Financial Intelligence Unit new legislative powers to support investigations. By the third year of the strategy, Companies House is expected to be fully integrated as an active gatekeeper rather than a passive registry, a shift intended to close a long-standing route for shell company abuse.
The Financial Conduct Authority is set to assume consolidated anti-money laundering supervision of the legal, accounting, and trust and corporate service sectors starting in 2028, bringing professions historically supervised by a patchwork of bodies under a single regulator.
Enforcement record and recent penalties
The government pointed to figures from the 2025/26 fiscal year to justify the expanded push: 3,158 disruptions of illicit financing, a 15% increase year-on-year, alongside 4,085 money laundering convictions, up 11%. Authorities recovered £345.3 million in assets over the same period, denied £1.1 billion in funds to criminal structures, and returned £26.1 million to fraud victims.
The strategy also arrives against a backdrop of enforcement action against major financial institutions. Barclays was fined £42 million over deficiencies in its anti-money laundering controls, a case cited as an illustration of the gaps the new supervisory architecture is designed to address.
Why it matters beyond the UK
For crypto businesses operating in or alongside the UK market, the strategy signals a period of tighter scrutiny as AI-driven detection tools and a better-resourced Financial Intelligence Unit come online. The consolidation of supervision under the FCA and the transformation of Companies House into an active gatekeeper both point toward closer monitoring of the corporate structures often used to move funds across borders, including those intersecting with digital asset markets.
The Royal United Services Institute, founded in 1831 by the first Duke of Wellington and described as the oldest defense and security think tank in the world, has tracked UK anti-financial crime policy for years and is among the institutions likely to assess the strategy's implementation as it unfolds.
