Is all cash over £ 1,000 now dirty in the UK?

I've been doing a lot of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) work with accountancy service providers recently in the UK.

As a result I've joined a number of accounting fora in order to improve my understanding my client key concerns. So far so good.


Then the other day I responded to an initial thread about a bankrupt asking for a payment in cash. Before I knew it, I was contributing to the post and I came up with a rather unpleasant thought. I've posted an edited version of my post below. I'd welcome your thoughts.

Police can stop someone with £1000 (or equivalent in cash), police can almost automatically confiscate because:

1. It meets their targets for asset recovery (if set).



2. No "ordinary person" carries that much money around, ergo you must be up to something (therefore the officer could be said to be disrupting unidentified criminal activity).



3. You can always get it back from the Magistrate's (at your expense).
   

Its a no lose situation for the police and almost completely irrelevant to dealing with those who have got £500,000 stuffed in their car/spare tyre and no plausible explanation.

Of course, if you then link this power in with research demonstrating that all cash notes (90% +) are contaminated by illegal drugs then the cops can argue, on the balance of probabilities that this cash is iffy.

Should you be rash enough to film what the police are doing on your mobile phone they will detain you under the 2008 Counter Terrorism Act (see link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8163428.stm )! How interesting that the UK Governments mantra of "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" does not seem to apply to uniformed officers, going about their business in public places!

I am beginning to wander if, in short, the government and the police get to ban cash without having to submit your plans to anything like that pesky Parliamentary scrutiny.

Of course if you really want to help illegal cash transactions / cross border money laundering then you increase the maximum value of your notes to say something like €500. Doh!

So what starts as a perfectly reasonable attempt to seize the proceeds of crime can (has?) becomes a shortcut for the police doing what they want when they want with no effective oversight.

My concern, as an AML specialist, is that police forces may try and police (arrest) the easy to catch low hanging fruit of any criminal activity, whilst using anti-terrorist legislation to curtail legitimate oversight and questioning as to what they are doing and why.

For those in the regulated AML sector, in short its much easier to nick an established businessman or woman who has made a mistake in trying to apply complex AML law and regulation than to send an officer to Bogota!

I'd welcome your thoughts/ feedback as I am off to take an anti-paranoia pill.