National Crime Agency announces crackdown on lawyers who help traffickers abuse modern slavery laws

Britain’s ‘FBI’ is to go after the lawyers helping traffickers abuse modern slavery laws to secure asylum for migrants entering the UK, it emerged yesterday.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) has announced plans to pursue corrupt immigration solicitors in league with criminal gangs who are suspected of launching scores of bogus claims.

The development comes after an explosion in claims from Albanian migrants who made up more than half of modern slavery claims lodged by small-boat arrivals in the first half of last year.

Now investigators plan a crackdown on those in the legal profession enabling immigration crime which could involve as many as 100 solicitors, the head of the NCA’s modern slavery and human trafficking unit estimated yesterday.

In the past the Solicitors Regulation Authority has investigated immigration solicitors for misconduct, but only a few cases result in anyone being struck off.

Between 2017-2020 only 11 solicitors were taken to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal over misconduct in immigration.

It is thought to be the first time that the National Crime Agency has considered bringing criminal charges against lawyers.

Investigators also plan to probe other ‘professional enablers’ including estate agents, accountants and those in the banking industry turning a blind eye to the funding of organised criminal gangs involved in people smuggling.

Rob Richardson, the head of the NCA’s modern slavery and human trafficking unit, said the agency was in ‘target identification’ mode.

He told the Guardian: ‘One of the things that we’ve seen is an increase in how organised crime groups use third parties to abuse protective mechanisms.

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‘So it’s been well reported that there are concerns that particularly Albanian organised crime groups are frustrating law enforcement efforts by claiming that they are victims of trafficking or seeking asylum, and where we are particularly interested from a NCA perspective is how does the legal industry, how do lawyers, support organised crime groups to do that.

‘So we’ve seen some examples where individuals have got scripts. They’ve been told exactly what to tell policemen to get picked up. And we have concerns about how that works.’

Mr Richardson said he was aware of the difficulty of prosecuting those in the legal profession, due to the protections, known as privilege, given to communications between a lawyer and their clients.

He said the agency would work with the Solicitors Regulation Authority in an effort to discipline or strike off lawyers where prosecutions were not possible.

He added: ‘We will often see individual circumstances or individual accounts, where it is believed that, you know – I’m going to be careful not to use the word ‘corrupt’ – a non-compliant solicitor is advising in an organised crime group.

‘So, what we need to do in the first instance is demonstrate that this is a real threat. And then look at kind of building some strategies around bringing together the appropriate plans to be able to tackle it.

‘We are working with our partners. We are conducting a survey at present to understand who are the high-risk agents but we haven’t a sense of scale yet… It’s less than 100, it may well be in the 10s, I would estimate.’

Yesterday an NCA spokesman confirmed that investigators were currently ‘assessing the scale of the possible threat’ and no criminal investigations are yet underway.

He said ‘The NCA makes regular assessments of the scale of threat posed by professional enablers in a wide range of crime areas, including people smuggling and human trafficking.

‘The potential abuse of modern slavery provisions is one such area where we, alongside our partners, are making such an assessment.

‘Tackling organised immigration crime is a priority for the NCA, and we will work with law enforcement and regulatory partners where appropriate to disrupt people smuggling and trafficking networks in any way we can.’