POLICE TO USE CAPONE PLOY ON GANGLAND

Police are seeking access to the tax files of suspected drugs barons and
big criminals in secret negotiations with the Inland Revenue.

The move, which mirrors the tactics used to smash the empire of 1920s
Chicago mobster Al Capone, would for the first time allow police to study
the tax affairs of private individuals.

The tactic has civil liberties implications but would provide police with a
crucial tool in their attempts to bring down the top-tier criminals who are
able to distance themselves from their illegal activities.

Senior officials at the Inland Revenue have been holding talks with the
Association of Chief Police Officers and the National Criminal Intelligence
Service aimed at developing a system which would not be open to abuse.

A senior NCIS source said: "The Revenue are all for it. At the moment we
have the ability to pass information to them but they can't pass
information to us. We want to get to the stage where, in serious organised
crime investigations, there is a cross-flow of intelligence."

The talks are likely to lead to the agreement next month of a memorandum of
understanding between the Revenue, police and the NCIS. The document is
likely to go before the Treasury Minister, Barbara Roche, who is
considering legislation to permit such information sharing.

Treasury officials are understood to be looking at the possibility of
including the proposal as an amendment to the Finance Act. The arrangement
would be partly modelled on the Criminal Assets Bureau in Ireland, where
tax officers and police share information.

It is understood that the NCIS would seek to act as a clearing house for
all requests for tax information made by individual police forces. If the
request satisfied the necessary criteria, it would be passed on to the
Revenue.

Last night John Wadham, of the human rights group Liberty, said police
access to tax files should not be given "where the police simply want to
ferret around in people's files" and called for a system which was
regulated by the courts.

He said: "There may be circumstances where the police have a justifiable
reason to have access to Inland Revenue files but there should be an
independent check to see that this is not abused. The obvious solution is
for that independent check to be a judge."

Police chiefs hope that tax inspectors will be drafted in to work at a new
confiscation agency being considered by the Home Office as a way of
targeting criminals' assets.

Simon Goddard, of the strategic and specialist intelligence branch at NCIS,
said police are failing to confiscate the money and assets of the top level
drug traffickers. "We are not getting the right people. We are not getting
the Mr Bigs behind it all," he said. "Between 1987 and 1996 only 157 drug
trafficking confiscation orders for UKP100,000 or more were made against a
background of over 45,000 convictions for supply of drugs."

Law enforcement agencies are also concerned that new opportunities for drug
traffickers and criminals to launder their money are being created by the
introduction of the euro.