REPORT: Britain launches FBI-style force and new crime strategy

Britain launched a new crime-fighting agency on Monday and unveiled a revamped strategy to combat serious organized crime, which it says costs the country 24 billion pounds ($38.6 billion) and represents a threat to national security.    

At the heart of what the government vowed would be a tougher new approach is the National Crime Agency (NCA), dubbed Britain's version of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) by media, which will focus on organized, economic and cybercrime, border policing and child sex abuse.    

NCA Director General Keith Bristow has also promised a new relationship with the private sector to combat white-collar crime, actively seeking bankers to work as unpaid "specials". 

The new strategy will adopt the four strands used in Britain's counter-terrorism approach - pursue, prevent, prepare and protect. May said the aim was not just more prosecutions but "the relentless disruption" of criminal gangs.    

The NCA takes on many of the duties of its widely criticized predecessor, the Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) which Prime Minister David Cameron's government decided to replace shortly after coming to power in 2010.    

However the opposition Labor Party said the NCA was just a re-branding exercise which disguised cuts to policing budgets.    


REUTERS


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