POCA Work & Asset Forfeiture: An All Circuits Overview

As financial crime persists and evolves, so the law develops in response. The past year was no exception, with significant changes coming through statute and case law. More unpredictable is the status of digital assets, which remain of interest (or concern) to authorities and investors. On the ground, recent judgments demonstrate how the existing law and its newer provisions are being applied.

With regards to legislation, the Crime and Policing Bill promises sweeping change. The UK government has described this bill as intended to reform the confiscation regime, direct more recovered funds to victims, and introduce costs protection for enforcement agencies in the High Court. The Bill is currently before the House of Lords for its second reading.

Although already enacted, more of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA) provisions came into force. Among other things, these provisions amend Part 2 of the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) to enable more agencies to seize and forfeit digital assets via civil recovery. Also significant have been amendments to the LSAG guidance (released in April) and incoming amendments to the Money Laundering Regulations 2017. The government has described the latter as designed “to close regulatory loopholes, address proportionality concerns, and account for evolving risks in relation to money laundering and terrorist financing”.

In the courts, the SFO secured its first Unexplained Wealth Order over a property held by the wife of a convicted fraudster (Claire Schools). In El Khouri [2025] UKSC 3, the Supreme Court established that the principal money laundering offences do not have extraterritorial effect when both the criminal conduct and laundering occur overseas (overturning Rogers [2014] EWCA Crim 1680). Numerous other judgments have developed the law of

• criminal confiscation (Butler [2025] EWCA crim 1, Taktouk [2025] EWCA Crim 71, Bond [2024] EWCA Crim 1570);
• enforcement receivers (Waterhouse [2024] EWCA Crim 1654); and
•  civil recovery (Bijou [2024] EWHC 2997 (Admin), Wang [2024] EWHC 2059 (Ch), Harvey [2024] EWHC 2832 (Admin)).

The ECCTA amendments to POCA now extend both Part 2 (confiscation) and Part 5 (civil forfeiture) to cryptoassets. Under Part 2, arrest is no longer a pre-condition: officers can seize “cryptoasset-related items”, reconstruct unhosted wallets, and magistrates’ courts can make enforcement orders against cryptoasset service providers (CASPs). Under Part 5 (Chapters 3C–3F), the civil regime enables seizure of unhosted-wallet assets, freezing orders directed at CASPs, wallet forfeiture following detention/freezing, and pre-hearing conversion to cash to manage volatility (no minimum threshold).

Three particularly noteworthy cases involving cryptocurrency received judgment over the past year. In DPP v Surin [2025] EWHC 10 (KB) the High Court granted summary judgment for a Part 5 recovery order over around £3.5 million in bitcoin (BTC’) held in a Coinbase-hosted wallet. In August 2025, the Police secured account freezing and forfeiture orders over the Tate brothers’ bank funds and cryptoassets held in a Gemini-hosted wallet (total forfeited around £2.6 million). Finally, following the conviction of Jian Wen in 2024 (and her co-defendants’ guilty pleas in 2025), the case now moves to asset recovery with regards to 61,000 BTC. This case will test large-scale cross-border co-operation, BTC tracing, conversion/realisation, and the handling of third-party/proprietary claims from a large victim cohort. It promises to showcase how criminal confiscation and civil recovery/forfeiture can operate in tandem and at scale.

POCA now permits “destruction” of seized cryptoassets where realisation is impracticable or contrary to the public interest (eg, if its re-entry into circulation would facilitate crime). While destruction is technically feasible (on-chain burns/issuer burns or, controversially, key-shredding), for assets like bitcoin the public-interest limb is hard to satisfy, so, arguably, such a case would be more likely to test conversion/realisation protocols than destruction. Any application will attract scrutiny on issues of proportionality, valuation timing, third-party rights, audit trail, and cybersecurity/data-protection (especially if off-chain processes are used).

This overview was drafted by Flavia Kenyon and Christopher Sykes of 33 Chancery Lane, with thanks to David Trovato of the FCA and Jeffrey Bryant of the CPS for providing their summary of recent confiscation cases.