Among the bad effects of this decision, a firm said, is that it will have a "downstream impact on the fight against financial crime."

The UK government’s recent decision to delete a court reporting database, called Courtsdesk, has prompted a firm operating in areas such as anti-money laundering to worry that this move will make it harder to fight financial crime.

Courtsdesk, according to a variety of media reports (The Times (of London), Daily Telegraph, Yorkshire Post) has been the UK’s largest court reporting database – more than 1,500 journalists from 39 media groups have used the platform. It has been shut down because of a “data protection issue,” reports said. 

“This is not just about ensuring a free press has access to accurate and timely court data. The Ministry of Justice’s order for Courtsdesk to delete its archive will have a downstream impact on the fight against financial crime,” Matt Mills, CEO of Ripjar, an AI-native provider of smarter screening solutions, said in an emailed statement to this news service.  

“Regulated companies including banks, financial services and legal firms rely on press reporting of criminal court cases as a vital part of their anti-money laundering customer screening processes,” Mills continued. “The order to delete Courtsdesk’s archive of millions of court records weakens the media’s ability to report on criminal cases and also undermines the screening efforts of regulated businesses to properly vet the people and organisations they onboard and transact with. By making it harder for media to cover crime, this decision makes it easier for financial criminals to evade regulated screening processes and move illicit funds through legitimate businesses."

One report (Yorkshire Post, 12 February) said the UK government has confirmed that it is working on a new arrangement to help journalists report on magistrates courts, after it suspended the Courtsdesk project.

Among its features, Courtsdesk provides a list of cases making their way through courts and lists plaintiffs, defendants, judges and upcoming court dates. It was founded over a decade ago by Enda Leahy, who is a former deputy editor of The Irish Mail on Sunday.

The Minister for Courts and Legal Services Sarah Sackman was quoted last week as saying in the House of Commons that Courtsdesk has yet to delete the information it holds. Sackman said that under the previous Conservative Government in 2020, the UK entered into an agreement with Courtsdesk to repackage data held by the Courts and Tribunals Service in a “more accessible and easier to search form."

However, Sackman reportedly said Courtsdesk “breached” this agreement by “sharing private, personal and legally sensitive information with a third-party AI company.”

(Editor’s comment: The saga highlights issues such as how long, for example, should reports of legal proceedings, and particularly convictions and punishments, remain in the public domain. This publication can attest that persons claiming to act for financial sector miscreants, such as those banned from the wealth management industry for a period, have demanded that such stories be deleted, and have invoked data protection rules or other regulations as arguments in favour of doing so. It remains a matter of debate how far such persons can turn over a “new page” in their work history and whether this can make background checks on people for compliance more difficult.)