The UK’s Dirty Secret: Millions of Britons are Exposed to Bribery and Money Laundering

When most people think of bribery, it elicits images of shadowy offshore accounts and high-level business executives and politicians shaking hands in boardrooms. It is certainly not something that we might think of in our everyday lives. A new report by ISEC suggests that everyday corruption in the UK is both widespread and largely invisible.

In our report, we surveyed 1,000 UK adults about their experiences of bribery and money laundering. The results were alarming.

• 16% of respondents—roughly 7.5 million adults—said they’d been asked to pay a bribe in the past year.

• 9% actually paid one.

• 11% were asked to help launder money.

• 7% admitted taking part.

The results find that millions of ordinary Britons, whether complicit or not, are being drawn into corruption and money laundering. Like with most economic crimes, we highlight a discrepancy between crime statistics and actual lived experience. The crime statistics for example record a little over 2,500 cases per year.

The At-Risk Demographics

Notably, our survey found that men are more than twice as likely to be asked to pay a bribe

than women. Age is also a significant factor, and this data suggests that there is indeed a generational divide. We have found that younger adults are more susceptible not only to bribery in the first instance but also to so-called “mule herders”, offenders who recruit members of the public into laundering the proceeds of crime through for example part-time work opportunities and get rich quick schemes.

Our data highlights the need for stronger awareness campaigns, particularly aimed at young people in schools and universities.

Where Does Corruption Take Place and What Does it Involve?

We find that bribery is most pervasive in the private sector, particularly in the financial sector which accounted for a staggering 28% of requests. In comparison, the next largest sector, construction/manufacturing/engineering, accounted for 8% of requests. While the public and charity sector may indicate lower levels, we caution that this may simply be because they are smaller sectors.

The most common type of bribe requested is unsurprising with cash being the most popular in nearly half of the cases. What is particularly worrying, however, is that we found that 15% of respondents reported being asked for sexual favours, an aspect of corruption that is rarely reported.

Conclusion

What we have found in our research highlights that in most cases corruption isn’t defined by headline scandals involving politicians or unscrupulous lawyers opening offshore shell accounts at the behest of their clients. Rather, it is defined by the very real problem of normalising unethical acts. Put simply, the UK might not be as clean as we think.

Until corruption in the UK is accurately measured and discussed by researchers and challenged at every level of society by the public it will remain an epidemic hidden in plain sight. If millions of Britons are being propositioned with bribes and money laundering recruitment schemes each year, is the UK really as Boris Johnson put it “not remotely a corrupt nation”?