The Government has reopened a fraud risk it already knew about

Millions of pounds was being stolen by Eastern European criminal gangs from legitimate beneficiaries, with ease and with little risk of prosecution. Ministers say a subsequent review found no evidence that the list itself had been used to facilitate criminal activity. Our experience calls that into question. Restoring the list without strengthened safeguards means more families will suffer. Yet adding safeguards is neither difficult nor expensive.

In our work investigating probate disputes and fraud, we have seen evidence in which the Bona Vacantia list has been used as a starting point for dishonest activity. These cases have involved forged Wills, false executor details and probate applications designed to release funds quickly, before inconsistencies are identified. The existence of such cases is not speculative. They are documented, investigated and, in some instances, litigated.

The question, therefore, is not whether transparency is desirable (we too believe it is). The question is how to provide transparency while managing the risk effectively.

The Bona Vacantia list makes certain estates visible at a particularly vulnerable point in the administration process. By definition, these estates lack known beneficiaries (which doesn’t mean family doesn’t exist). That absence reduces the likelihood of early challenge and increases the time available for wrongdoing to go undetected. In risk terms, that combination matters.

The Government’s position appears to rely on a narrow conception of causation: unless fraud can be directly traced to the list as a sole source, the list is treated as benign. But fraud does not usually operate through a single point of failure. It emerges from systems that expose information while relying on controls that are slow, fragmented or reactive.

That distinction is important, particularly at a time when the public have a justified and growing concern about the risks created by the digital availability of data. When public bodies publish information, the relevant test should not be whether misuse has been conclusively proven, but whether misuse is reasonably predictable and capable of mitigation. In this case, mitigation was possible.

Before reinstating the list, the Government should have introduced targeted reforms designed to preserve openness while reducing exposure. These don’t need to be burdensome. They include enhanced scrutiny of probate applications linked to publicly listed estates, more rigorous verification of executors and witnesses in higher-risk cases, and closer coordination between probate registries and financial

institutions when funds are released. So poor are the current checks that signatures do not need to resemble the real ones and detached houses in prime areas in the Southeast are accepted as valued under £325k (the inheritance tax threshold). A five-minute check on Right Move would have exposed the fraud.

There is also a strong case for the use of technology. Pattern recognition tools can identify repeat applications, anomalies in documentation, and behaviours consistent with previous fraud cases far earlier than manual review. These tools are already used elsewhere in the legal and financial system. Their absence from probate administration is increasingly difficult to justify.

None of these measures would prevent legitimate claims. Nor would they undermine transparency. They would simply recognise that public systems must adapt to the way modern fraud operates.

The cost of not doing so is huge. Rightful beneficiaries have lost family homes and neighbours in expensive roads have suddenly found themselves living next door to machete wielding criminal gangs (though more typically the houses are sold on quickly). Public confidence in probate administration is weakened. And the taxpayer absorbs the financial and administrative consequences as well as the huge loss to the Treasury.

Good governance requires more than assurances that risks have not been conclusively proven. It requires engagement with evidence, experience and probability. Where systems have been shown to be capable of misuse, maintaining them without improvement is negligent.

Transparency and protection are not competing principles. When balanced properly, they reinforce each other. The failure to strike that balance here risks repeating problems we already understand, at a time when public trust in institutions is fragile.

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Simon Steele-Williams is a Solicitor and Head of Dispute Resolution at Parfitt Cresswell Solicitors

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