Main points
- It is difficult to establish how much of an individual country's GDP is lost to corruption and money laundering per year. Existing estimates include 2.5% of the world's gross domestic product being lost to corruption each year. Similar estimates for the amount of money laundered include US$800 billion to US$2 trillion per year. However, these are approximations and should be treated as such.
- Looking at sectoral level loss provided more precision. For example, the national health service in the UK reports around £1.27 billion lost to fraud, bribery and corruption each year.
- One method of estimating the return of investment can include comparing the operating budget of agencies responsible for asset recovery versus the assets seized where such data is available.
- For example, the US Department of Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network operating budget in 2023 was US$222.9 million. In 2022, through investigating financial crimes, US$7.7 billion of assets were seized in total the US. In the UK, the National Crime Agency accounted for £872 million of expenditure in 2023/2024, and the same year the Home Office reported over £200 million of assets were confiscated.
- A notable study measuring the profitability of asset confiscation work in the EU shows that all EU member states are estimated to be profitable, and only six were not.
