Banks urged to step up efforts to stop modern slavery profits

Britain's top law enforcement body today urged banking chiefs to step up their efforts to identify overseas property and other high-value assets bought by people traffickers, as part of a new drive against modern slavery.

The National Crime Agency said gang leaders involved in sexual and forced labour exploitation in this country were often trying to smuggle their profits abroad.

But it said banks could wreck the criminals’ “business model” — and save victims — by improving their anti-money laundering checks so that the traffickers can be identified and stripped of their illicit wealth.

The plea came as Barclays bank used its Canary Wharf headquarters to host an “Invisible People” exhibition by the agency to highlight the plight of modern slavery victims.

It follows the conviction in June of Josephine Iyamu, a brothel madam from Bermondsey, who used “voodoo” threats to control the women she exploited while her profits went to buying property in Nigeria.

She was jailed for 18 years. NCA deputy director Tom Dowdall said her case highlighted the role banks could play in checking financial transactions to help law enforcers identify people traffickers and deprive them of their profits.

He added: “Money laundering ultimately involves the exploitation of victims and there’s an awful lot that people in the banking sector can do to help us reduce this crime.

“Our investigations regularly take us outside the UK, so we need evidence about the proceeds from their offences, how we can identify them and track them.

"We want to stop the crime, disrupt the crime by looking for a criminal justice outcome, but the other aspect is that this is a business model and we need to look at ways that we can dismantle it. That includes the identification of profits and criminal proceeds.

“What we are asking the banking and financial sector is about developing a greater understanding that this crime exists and that through greater vigilance we can do more to protect victims.”

The number of modern slavery victims has risen sharply in the past year, despite concerns that many cases still remain undiscovered.

The most common form of exploitation is forced labour including in car washes and nail bars. Other victims are forced to sell sex or forced into domestic servitude.

Banks and other financial institutions are required to report suspicious transactions that might involve money laundering.

The NCA also wants counter staff to learn how to raise the alarm when they suspect that slavery victims are being forced by their controllers to open and use accounts.