The report by Comptroller and Auditor General Chris Swinson wants changes to the way the millions contained in two funds are accounted for. Mr Swinson says that the £8 million-plus in the Drugs Trafficking Confiscation Fund and the £10 million-plus in the Criminal Offences Confiscation Fund should be put into another area where the money cannot be used to top up budgets. And he recommends changes to the membership of steering groups who decide on how the money is spent so that chief officers are not authorising requests for expenditure from their own departments. He says that the groups are largely made up of chief officers whose departments are beneficiaries of grants from the two funds. He adds that under the existing arrangements States police and Customs investigators might have been tempted to pursue cases where it was more likely that significant assets could be seized in preference to others where it was suspected that there were no assets to confiscate.
