The Criminal Finances Act 2017 introduced significant changes to the existing laws dealing with money laundering and asset recovery under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA 2002). 

Since its inception, it has created the new corporate offences of failure to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion and a key element of the Act is the introduction of Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs) which came into force on 31 January 2018. 

Whilst existing legislations dealing with proceeds of crime has largely been domestic in its focus, the introduction of UWOs moves towards addressing corruption at an international level and is...