Law enforcement/ U.K.

Britain's ‘FBI’ has recovered only £22.5million in assets from criminal masterminds despite having a budget of £500million.

MPs on the home affairs committee said the National Crime Agency – which was set up in 2013 to seize the proceeds of crime from millionaire villains – must ‘improve drastically’.

‘We are not seeing the level of performance we would expect,’ they said in a report examining policing reforms introduced by Home Secretary Theresa May.

‘It is not recovering assets in sufficient volume to justify a budget of half a billion. The NCA must improve drastically so that the returns achieved equate to the resources available to it.’

However, Westminster’s home affairs committee said its performance was better than the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which recouped only £14.9million of criminal assets in its last year of operation.

UK 'FBI' only seizes £22m from criminal masterminds since it was set up in 2013 despite £500m budget