ARA Rejects Criticism

The Assets Recovery Agency's performance has been strongly defended following criticism from the Public Accounts Committee.

It's report criticised the agency for focusing on recovering assets by court action, rather than negotiating settlements.

Noting that, so far this year in Northern Ireland, the ARA has frozen over £4m of assets, and seized or settled over half of it, ARA boss Alan McQuillan said the agency did not want to offer criminals "firesale deals".

He noted that the committee criticised them for concentrating on recovering the full value of criminals' illegal assets by court action, rather than negotiating settlements, which he said left them with some of their gains, responding: "It would be very easy for us to offer firesale prices for criminals.

"But how much to people really want me to leave drug dealers, pimps, pornography dealers - how much do people really want me to leave them with?

"If we can take them on to court or push them into a settlement, that takes much longer, but gets a much higher return."

Mr McQuillan said it was taking longer to get cases through court that originally envisaged - about three years in England and about four in Northern Ireland.

The agency is due to be disbanded from April next year and its duties transferred to the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

It was revealed earlier this year that the ARA had cost £65m over four years, but seized assets worth £23m.

However, Mr McQuillan commented: "We actually reached the turning point last year where we recovered more than the base funding we get from the Treasury each year.

"We were forecast to get to that point a year before, it was a year late."

(BMcC)