Cash Seizure
If police or customs officers find in your possession an amount of cash in excess of £1000, and if they have reasonable grounds for suspecting it is either the proceeds of crime, or to be used in unlawful activity, they may seize it and require you to provide an explanation (with evidence) of how the cash was generated.
If police or customs officers find in your possession an amount of cash in excess of £1000, and if they have reasonable grounds for suspecting it is either the proceeds of crime, or to be used in unlawful activity, they may seize it and require you to provide an explanation (with evidence) of how the cash was generated.
Following seizure, an application for further detention must be made to a magistrates’ court within 48 hours. The court can allow the authorities to retain the cash for up to three months in the first instance, and on subsequent application up to a total of two years. On-going detention is only justified if either (a) there is a need for continuing investigation into the origins of the cash, (b) criminal proceedings are being considered in respect of the cash, or (c) criminal proceedings in respect of the cash have started but not yet finished.
At any point the authorities may return the cash, or part of it. Equally, and more likely, they may apply for the cash to be forfeited. Forfeiture proceedings can be contested, but the prosecution need only persuade the court on the balance of probabilities that the cash should be forfeited. There is an automatic right of appeal to the Crown Court.
Someone from whom cash is seized may also apply to the court for its return. However, in almost all such situations, the authorities claim more time is needed to investigate the provenance of the cash and the courts allow it.
There is no public funding for detention and forfeiture proceedings. More controversially, and contrary to the general rule in civil proceedings that “costs follow the event”, there is no scope for a successful party to recover their costs from the authorities. In practice this means that for relatively small amounts (i.e. less than £5000) there is little merit in instructing lawyers, as their fees will consume the majority, if not the totality, of the detained funds.
