Hostile states are using organised crime gangs to carry out illegal activity in the UK, the National Crime Agency (NCA) has warned.
In a speech outlining the agency’s annual assessment of crime threats to Britain, NCA Director-General Graeme Biggar highlighted “the emerging links between serious and organised crime and hostile states.”
States like Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are collaborating with UK-based criminal gangs because it is harder for them to get their own operatives into the country since the Salisbury poisonings in 2018, he said.
Graeme Biggar, director-general of the National Crime Agency (NCA), during a Northern Ireland Policing Board meeting at James House, Belfast, on June 1, 2023. (Liam McBurney/PA Media)
Speaking in Westminster, central London, on Monday, Mr. Biggar said: “North Korea has for some time used cybercrime to steal funds and more recently cryptocurrency….