National Crime Agency

The National Crime Agency (NCA) is the United Kingdom's lead law-enforcement body for serious and organised crime. Established in 2013 under the Crime and Courts Act, it operates across jurisdiction boundaries and can deploy abroad. The NCA has primary responsibility in the UK for countering money laundering, people trafficking, drug importation and, increasingly, sanctions evasion and cybercrime. Its financial-intelligence division has played a central role in enforcing Russian sanctions since 2022, working alongside OFSI (the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation) and His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, while its National Cyber Crime Unit leads prosecutions against organised cybercrime groups.

In the context of Russia's war on Ukraine, the NCA has been involved in asset freezing operations against designated Russian individuals and has investigated several cases of suspected sanctions breaches involving UK-registered companies and individuals. The Smyrtos operation on 14 June 2026 marked the NCA's first arrest arising directly from a Royal Marines boarding operation. Following the interdiction of the shadow tanker in the English Channel, the NCA arrested an Indian national on board on suspicion of sanctions offences, a case that would test the legal framework for prosecuting non-British nationals found on non-British-flagged vessels in international waters. The case is being watched closely by sanctions-enforcement practitioners across NATO member states as a potential precedent for aggressive physical enforcement of oil price-cap measures, moving beyond financial and insurance levers.

In July 2026, banks flagged a £1m transaction from Reform donor Fiona Cottrell to a company run by Reform deputy leader Richard Tice to the NCA over anti-money-laundering concerns. The referral is a compliance signal made under banks' anti-money-laundering obligations, not a finding of wrongdoing or an NCA-initiated investigation.

On 16 July 2026 the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit secured what it called Britain's largest-ever cybercrime prosecution, when Owen Flowers and Thalha Jubair were jailed five years and six months each for the September 2024 Scattered Spider attack on Transport for London, which disabled 148 systems and exposed data on roughly 10 million passengers. Deputy Director Paul Foster, head of the Unit, called it "the largest cyber crime prosecution ever brought before the UK courts and the culmination of nearly two years of painstaking work by the NCA, CPS and our policing partners."