March 2026 snapshot

ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING AND ASSET RECOVERY (AMLAR)

Government Transformation and Service Delivery

Record date: 31 March 2026

Whole-life cost: £368.5m
Published schedule: 01/04/2023 – Low: 30/09/2027, Mid: 30/09/2027, High: 30/09/2027
NISTA delivery confidence: Not disclosed
Senior responsible owner: Andrew Preston

What the project is for

The AMLAR Programme will uplift the law enforcement response to money laundering, by improving people capacity, skills capability and technology to increase the prevention, detection, and disruption of money laundering and the recovery of criminal assets. The AMLAR Programme contributes to HM Government (HMG) commitments, including those set out in Economic Crime Plan 2 , published in March 2023, a key outcome of which is to reduce money laundering and recover more criminal assets.

Departmental delivery commentary

Compared with FY24/25 Q4, the NISTA/SRO Delivery Confidence Assessment (DCA) rating decreased to AMBER in FY25/26 Q4. This is primarily due to two changes at portfolio level: • A 5% shortfall in Financial Crime officers in 25/26, resulting in two milestones moving into 26/27. The remaining officers will now be recruited across Q1–Q2 of 26/27. • A delay to the delivery of the new crypto storage solution, aligned to the end of the existing business as usual (BAU) storage contract. This adjusts the delivery milestone from June to December 2026. These changes do not impact programme cost, and forecast benefit reductions remain within programme tolerance levels. Throughout FY25/26, AMLAR enabled several major operations: • Operation Destabilise - (NCA-led international investigation) disrupting Russian money laundering networks linked to organised crime, drug trafficking and espionage. This led to 84 arrests and £20m seized. • Operation Hawksmoor - resulting in multiple arrests, the seizure of high value vehicles, £60,000 cash, and designer watches. • Operation Machinize - targeting high street crime, money laundering and modern slavery. Outcomes included closure of 10 shops, seizure of £40,000 cash, 200,000 cigarettes, 7,000 tobacco packs, 8,000 illegal vapes, and 2 vehicles. In FY25/26, the programme has delivered an additional £60m in criminal asset recovery, with an additional £290m restrained but not yet recovered, exceeding yearly benefit targets. It has also delivered 758 money laundering disruptions against a target of 404.

Schedule

Compared with FY24/25 Q4, the project end date has moved from 31/03/2026 to 30/09/2027. This change reflects a rebaseline of the programme to align with the decommissioning of the BAU Joint Asset Recovery Database (JARD). JARD decommissioning is a critical dependency for the delivery of the new Asset Recovery IT Service. Decommissioning is scheduled to complete by September 2027, which drives the extension of the programme timeline.

Cost

Compared to financial year 24/25-Q4, the project's departmentally agreed Whole Life Cost at 25/26-Q4 (measured in £m) decreased from last year's £414.2m to £401.7m. This is primarily due to the following factors: reduced FY 24/25 Economic Crime Levy receipts which impacted the programme’s ability to grow in line with original recruitment delivery plans. Civil Service headcount cap restrictions also impacted the national Crime Agencies ability to grow as planned, which resulted in the deferral of circa 70 resources to other delivery partner areas at a reduced cost per full time equivalent resource.

Benefits

Compared to financial year 24/25-Q4, the project's departmentally agreed Benefits at 25/26-Q4 (measured in £m) increased from £1214.43m to £1215.46m. This is primarily due to the following factors: Further work was undertaken to refine benefit modelling, removing areas of optimism bias that was included in the original model to reflect uncertainties at the time. The outputs from the recruited Financial Investigators has also been refined resulting in increased asset recovery outputs.