“THERE is no place for dirty money in Britain…London is not a place to stash your dodgy cash,” thundered David Cameron in a speech this week. The prime minister’s particular focus was the rampant foreign investment in recent years in the capital’s fanciest properties, much of it through offshore companies cloaked in a “shroud of secrecy”.
The polemic contained proposals. Mr Cameron will call for the Land Registry to publish data on which foreign companies own which land and property titles in England and Wales. The government will also consult on whether any foreign company bidding on a government contract should be made to reveal its “beneficial” (ie real as opposed to legally registered) owners. The World Bank recently made a similar commitment for contracts it finances.
London is a popular destination for money launderers, especially those from Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. (Latin Americans still prefer Miami.) A penthouse with a view of Hyde Park adds a touch of class to a kleptocrat’s property portfolio. Lawyers and estate agents are supposed to ask hard questions, but are barely policed. A chunk of the Qaddafis’ ill-gotten gains flowed into the capital’s housing stock. Global Witness, an NGO, recently unearthed a network of shell companies whose directors had links to a former chief of Kazakhstan’s secret...Continue reading
via Brian Rushton, Dirty dens
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