The United Kingdom is set to host a major international summit next summer to tackle the global flows of dirty money that threaten both national security and public safety. Scheduled for 23–24 June at Lancaster House in London, the Illicit Finance Summit will bring together governments, civil society organizations, and private sector representatives, including major banks, to build a global coalition against corruption and illicit finance. The summit aims to accelerate efforts to prevent, disrupt, and recover dirty money while strengthening enforcement and international cooperation.
Dirty money in the UK fuels street-level crime, including drug-related violence and organized immigration crime, while abroad it supports international conflicts. Illicit gold has been linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and civil war in Sudan, while the misuse of crypto-assets enables sanctions evasion. The summit will focus on these modern methods of moving illicit funds, particularly laundering through the property sector, crypto-assets, and illicit gold trading.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper emphasized the pervasive impact of dirty money, highlighting its role in people smuggling, property-based money laundering by kleptocrats, and funding overseas conflicts. She underlined the government’s ongoing measures to combat these threats, including sanctions against international scam networks, restrictions on entry for oligarchs, and cross-border law enforcement collaborations to disrupt criminal financial networks.
The summit will also support the implementation of the UK’s upcoming Anti-Corruption Strategy, which sets out a comprehensive approach to tackling corruption globally. As part of this strategy, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is providing £3 million in funding for investigative journalists and civil society organizations, including Transparency International, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), and the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC). This funding aims to uncover and expose the ways corrupt actors amass and hide illicit wealth, strengthening accountability and transparency.
Recent investigative work, supported by UK funding, has revealed complex corruption and money laundering networks, such as Balkan drug traffickers smuggling cocaine to Europe under the guise of fruit shipments and large-scale scams defrauding hundreds of millions of pounds from victims in multiple countries. By combining high-level international collaboration with grassroots investigative efforts, the summit seeks to disrupt these illicit networks, hold corrupt actors accountable, and protect both the UK and the global community from the damaging effects of dirty money.
