Day: August 30, 2018

A series of major new UK aid programmes will help bring criminals to justice and recover millions of pounds of illegal assets in developing countries, International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt has announced.

Illicit finance sees “dirty money” diverted away from people in poor countries to individuals involved in crime, terrorism and fraud. This not only harms economies and legitimate financial sectors, but also erodes the confidence of potential investors.

The package, announced as Prime Minister Theresa May visits Kenya, will:

• create new centres of British expertise in major financials hubs to tackle financial crime more effectively;
• strengthen efforts in southern and eastern Africa to recover illegal money flows from crime, fraud and corruption through the courts;
• support Kenyan authorities to bring people committing financial crimes to justice by helping to identify proceeds of crime and seizing criminal property;
• train and mentor law enforcements officials in southern and eastern Africa to improve criminal justice systems by tightening legislation and strengthen investigation techniques, which will help to build their capacity to clamp down on serious organised crime, ranging from drugs and people trafficking to rhino and elephant poaching; and
• make use of British asset recovery experts by connecting them with counterparts across the globe.

During the visit, Minister for Africa Harriett Baldwin signed a new agreement with the Kenyan government to return stolen and corrupt funds that have been moved out of Kenya and are hidden in banks in the UK.

All stolen funds found and returned to Kenya will be used exclusively for development projects, in sectors including education and health. This includes over £3.5 million in proceeds of crime seized by courts in Jersey.

This agreement builds on our commitment made at the 2016 London Anti-Corruption Summit to stand shoulder to shoulder with countries who are committed to tackling corruption.

International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said:

Financial crime hurts the world’s poorest the most, taking money away from schools, hospitals and other vital services in developing countries. Today’s UK aid package will stop dirty money in its tracks and send a message to crooks that we are clamping down on spaces for them to hide their illegally gained wealth.

Even small decreases in illegal financial flows will give developing countries millions of pounds more to invest in their economies, helping them to stand on their own two feet and create a more prosperous future.

Disrupting organised global criminals before they can directly threaten the UK is firmly in our national interest, and will lead to better trade links with African countries by reassuring British businesses that they can invest with confidence.

The new commitments build on the UK’s existing leadership in tackling illicit financial flows, and over the last three years this has supported African law enforcement officials to develop skills which helped them to seize, confiscate or preserve over $76 million of illegal assets in 2017.

Notes to editors

• The African Union and United Nations High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) from Africa claim that over the last 50 years, Africa is estimated to have lost in excess of $1 trillion in IFFs.

Following an open competition, the Secretary of State for International Development, Penny Mordaunt, is pleased to announce that Dr Tamsyn Barton has been selected as the Government’s preferred candidate to succeed Dr Alison Evans as Chief Commissioner of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), the independent body responsible for scrutiny of UK aid.

Dr Barton was identified following a rigorous selection process, which was conducted in accordance with the Public Appointments Governance Code and validated by an independent assessor from the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments.

The appointment is now subject to an International Development Select Committee pre-appointment hearing, scheduled to take place next Tuesday, 4 September 2018.

Biography: Dr Tamsyn Barton

Dr Barton was until recently the Chief Executive of Bond, following an extensive and varied career in international development since 1993. She was previously Director-General at the European Investment Bank, which she also represented on the Board of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development.

Prior to that, Dr Barton worked for a range of NGOs and the Department for International Development in a range of policy and programme management roles, in both India and the UK. She is also a Trustee of the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Notes to editors:

1. Pre-appointment hearings involve select committees taking evidence from the preferred candidate for certain public appointments before they are confirmed. Following the public hearings, committees publish a report setting out their views on the candidate’s suitability for the post.
2. Pre-appointment hearings are non-binding but Ministers will consider the committee’s views before deciding whether to proceed with an appointment.
3. All appointments are made on merit and political activity plays no part in the selection process.
4. ICAI’s current chief commissioner, Dr Alison Evans, will leave ICAI at the end of 2018 to take up a post as Director General Evaluation at the World Bank Independent Evaluation Group.

• New UK-Kenya security compact builds on our cooperation to tackle shared threats
• Money lost to corruption and hidden in Britain will be returned to the people of Kenya

British paedophiles who target and abuse vulnerable children in Kenya will be brought to justice thanks to a new cyber centre being built by Britain in Nairobi, the Prime Minister will announce today.

Online child sex abuse is a global problem with images created and shared across the world, including in Kenya. This new centre will help the Kenyan police stop these images being distributed online to help protect children from being abused.

The centre will also tackle a major barrier that prevents these predators being caught and prosecuted.

Currently, Kenyan authorities do not receive reporting of material of child sexual abuse from US-based global tech companies because the specific, secure channels needed to do so do not exist in the country.

With the support of British funding, the new specialist cyber centre will, for the first time, enable Kenyan authorities to access data on abuse, provided the by tech firms, ensuring perpetrators can be brought to justice.

Britain’s funding of the cyber centre will mean the Kenyan police can now identify potential victims, investigate abuse and prosecute abusers. This builds on existing work by the UK’s National Crime Agency to set up Kenya’s Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Protection Unit (AHTCPU) and train and mentor its staff.

The new cyber centre being announced today – the first of its kind in Africa – will be based within this existing unit, which is seeing an increase in cases of child abuse. The AHTCPU has over 100 live investigations underway and since March 2016 has protected around 400 children and supported the arrest of around 40 suspects.

The child protection unit has already helped secure convictions in the UK of British paedophiles who’ve sexually abused children in Kenya. This includes:

• Simon Harris from Shropshire who was sentenced to 14 years in prison at Birmingham Crown Court in 2015 for sexually abusing Kenyan street children
• Keith Morris from Hull who was sentenced to 18 and a half years in prison at Leeds Crown Court in 2018 for sexually abusing Kenyan children in a village near Mombasa

Prime Minister Theresa May said:

Online child exploitation is an abhorrent crime and we are determined to ensure there is no place to hide for predators who use the internet to share images of abuse across borders, too often with impunity.

This builds on our ongoing work with Kenya on security and criminal justice – a partnership which has already helped to convict and imprison terrorists in the UK.

The cyber wing forms part of a new UK-Kenya security compact, signed today by Minister for Africa, Harriett Baldwin, and Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Monica Juma, and witnessed by Prime Minister May and President Kenyatta.

Through the new security pact, the UK has also committed to:

• offer training in community security to help strengthen the police’s engagement with marginalised communities, to help Kenya tackle violence against girls and women and to prevent extremism by dealing with the threat at source
• share expertise with Kenya’s criminal justice system to strengthen the procedures for processing complex legal cases including terrorism and organised crime – improving the use of terrorism legislation and strengthening interagency working to help bring offenders to justice in the UK and Kenya
• provide new support for aviation security including machines to detect explosives to keep the 100,000 Brits who visit Kenya every year safe by preventing attacks in the country and on direct flights to the UK

This builds on our ongoing cooperation through the first UK-Kenya Security Compact, agreed in 2015, and sets out a new programme of work for the years ahead.

The 2015 pact has led to two terrorism convictions in the UK, the establishment of a counter-IED training centre in Nairobi for regional security forces fighting Al-Shabaab, the extradition of wanted criminals from the UK to Kenya, and better aviation security – among other results.

And in a further example of UK and Kenyan domestic law enforcement working together to tackle shared threats, Minister for Africa Harriett Baldwin will sign an agreement in Nairobi today, witnessed by the Prime Minister, to return to the Kenyan people money that’s been lost to crime and corruption in Kenya and concealed in banks and assets in the UK.

Stolen funds found in Britain can now be used to fund development projects in sectors such as health and education. This includes over £3.6 million in proceeds of crime seized by courts in Jersey.

Other initiatives to be announced today to tackle corruption, increase investor confidence, encourage UK trade and investment and support economic growth in Africa include:

• a new programme to counter illicit financial flows across southern and eastern Africa to help regional law enforcement recover illegal funds and disrupt serious organised crime networks
• new practical guidance to help British companies overcome barriers to doing business in Kenya and other emerging markets, including advice on dealing with requests for bribes and human rights issues in supply chains – with tailored support to be offered to SMEs

The Queen has approved the nomination of the Reverend Canon Philip Ian Mounstephen,
MA, Executive Leader of the Church Mission Society, for election as Bishop of Truro in
succession to the Right Reverend Timothy Martin Thornton, MA, following his resignation on
31 August 2017.

An inquiry group of independent Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) panel members has investigated how the merger would affect householders, following initial concerns about the potential impact on ‘standard variable tariffs’ (SVTs) – the most common and expensive energy tariff.

As part of its in-depth review, the inquiry group has provisionally decided to clear the deal after finding that SSE and Npower do not compete closely on SVT prices.

Anne Lambert, Chair of the Inquiry Group, said:

It is vital that householders have a range of energy suppliers to choose from so they can find the best deal for them. With more than 70 energy companies out there, we have found that there is plenty of choice when people shop around.

But many people don’t shop around for their energy. So, we carefully scrutinized this deal, in particular how it would impact people who pay the more expensive standard variable prices.

Our analysis shows that the merger will not impact how SSE and Npower set their SVT prices because they are not close rivals for these customers.

Looking ahead, Ofgem’s price cap is also expected to protect SVT customers.

The CMA found that the number of people switching energy provider is the highest in a decade and the proportion on SVTs has fallen.

However, as previously outlined in its energy market investigation, the CMA has found that those people who do not switch, for whatever reason, are usually on one of the large energy suppliers’ SVTs and pay higher prices. Therefore, the CMA carefully examined whether the merger would change how the large energy suppliers set these prices.

The CMA has found:

• if SVT customers switch, they usually change to a cheaper, non-SVT, tariff
• the risk of losing customers as a result of an SVT price rise will not change with the merger
• evidence that few customers switch between SSE and Npower, instead preferring to move to other suppliers
• SSE and Npower do not compete closely on SVT prices
• SVT prices are mainly driven by changing wholesale costs

Therefore, the merger is not expected to have a significant impact on SVT pricing.

As part of its assessment, the CMA examined evidence from the six large energy suppliers; smaller suppliers; customer groups; and regulators. This included hearings with consumer groups and suppliers in Scotland where SSE has a large share of consumers. None of these raised substantive concerns about the effects of the merger on householders.

The CMA now welcomes views and evidence on its provisional decision by 20 September 2018 before coming to a final view. The statutory deadline for the CMA’s final report is 22 October 2018.

Further details are available on the investigation case page.

Notes to editors

1. This merger investigation is into the proposed deal between SSE Retail and Npower. Any future energy mergers – if they qualify for CMA investigation – will be scrutinized in relation to the specifics of the case.
2. The proposed merger primarily relates to SSE Retail and Npower’s energy supply activities to domestic customers in GB. SSE plc’s other interests (for example in generation and distribution, and supply to business customers) are not included in the proposed merger.
3. The CMA investigated the energy market in 2014-2016 and found many consumers and microbusinesses were paying more than they needed to. The CMA made recommendations to modernise and reform the market. These recommendations are being taken forward by Ofgem and will support consumers’ increasing engagement with the market.
4. The decision-maker on CMA Phase 2 inquiries like this one is the Inquiry Group. The appointed Inquiry Group is chosen from the CMA’s independent panel members who come from a variety of backgrounds, including economics, law, accountancy, business, and public/consumer policy. The membership of an inquiry group reflects a mix of expertise and experience.
5. The CMA is the UK’s primary competition and consumer authority. It is an independent non-ministerial government department with responsibility for carrying out investigations into mergers, markets and the regulated industries and enforcing competition and consumer law. For CMA updates, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
6. Media enquiries to the CMA should be directed to press@cma.gov.uk or 020 3738 6460.