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Act

Proceeds of Criminal Conduct Act (Revised Edition 2020)

British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission (FSC) · British Virgin Islands

In force

Status per Virgin Islands Laws Online (laws.gov.vg) (as at 2026-07-27)

View on FSC's website Source document

Current version last checked: 2026-07-11

Summary

This BVI statute is the core legal framework for confiscating the proceeds of criminal conduct and for money laundering offences in the Virgin Islands. It empowers the High Court and Magistrate's Court to make confiscation, restraint and charging orders against a defendant's realisable property, sets out substantive money laundering offences, and gives the Cabinet power to make regulations imposing AML compliance duties on entities regulated by the Financial Services Commission.

  • Confiscation and asset recovery: Establishes confiscation orders, restraint orders, charging orders, realisation of property, receivers, and procedures for reviewing and revising assessments of proceeds of crime.
  • Money laundering offences: Creates offences of assisting another to retain the benefit of criminal conduct, acquisition, possession or use of proceeds of criminal conduct, concealing or transferring proceeds of criminal conduct, and tipping-off; also provides for mandatory reporting of suspicious transactions.
  • External orders and cash seizure: Provides for registration and enforcement of external confiscation orders, and for seizure, detention, forfeiture and interest on cash suspected of being criminal proceeds, with a right of appeal to the Court of Appeal.
  • Regulatory powers: Empowers the Cabinet, on the advice of the Financial Services Commission, to make regulations requiring identification procedures, record-keeping, due diligence registers, suspicious transaction reporting procedures and training programmes for entities regulated by the Commission, with penalties for non-compliance capped at $150,000.

The Act underpins the BVI's AML/CFT regime and works alongside the Commission's Anti-Money Laundering Code of Practice and related regulations, imposing both criminal offences on individuals and compliance-programme obligations on regulated business entities.

Key obligations

  • Business entities regulated by the Financial Services Commission must comply with Cabinet regulations made under section 41 requiring identification and due diligence procedures, record maintenance, a register of inquiries, suspicious transaction reporting procedures and staff training programmes.
  • Persons must not assist another to retain, or acquire, possess, use, conceal or transfer, the benefit of criminal conduct (sections 28 to 30).
  • Persons must make mandatory reports of suspicious transactions as required under section 30A.
  • Persons aware of an investigation must not tip off a person subject to it (section 31) or otherwise prejudice an investigation (section 34B).
  • Any party aggrieved by a Magistrate's cash forfeiture order under section 37B must appeal to the Court of Appeal within 30 days of the order.

Applies to

business entities regulated by the Financial Services Commission, defendants and persons subject to criminal proceedings, financial institutions subject to the Code of Practice under section 27, police officers and the Financial Investigation Agency

Deadlines

  • 30 days from the date the order is made: Deadline for an aggrieved party to appeal a Magistrate's cash forfeiture order to the Court of Appeal under section 37B(5).

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Version history

2026-07-11

source file (current)