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2016-05-17 06:36:12
Foreign firms that own property in the UK will have to declare their assets
publicly in a bid to stamp out money-laundering, the government says.
Companies will have to be on a new register if they hold property or want to
compete for government contracts.
The move comes as Prime Minister David Cameron attempts to lead a wider effort
to crack down on global corruption.
World leaders are gathering in London for a summit aimed at stepping up action
to tackle the problem.
Funds 'siphoned'
Downing Street said Mr Cameron's plans for a register of foreign companies
owning UK property would include those who already owned property in the UK as
well as those seeking to buy.
It said the register would mean "corrupt individuals and countries will no
longer be able to move, launder and hide illicit funds through London's
property market, and will not benefit from our public funds".
It said foreign companies owned about 100,000 properties in England and Wales
and that more than 44,000 of these were in London.
Tax havens
Mr Cameron will also say that some of Britain's overseas territories and crown
dependencies will join 33 other countries in agreeing to share automatically
their own registers of company ownership, information that will be accessible
to the police.
Matthew Hancock, Cabinet Office Minister, told the BBC: "It does not matter
where in the world your company is registered if you own property in London or
sell things to government, as part of government procurement, then you have to
declare the beneficial ownership, in other words the ultimate ownership of the
company."
Mr Cameron will also announce plans for a new anti-corruption co-ordination
centre in London and a wider corporate offence for executives who fail to
prevent fraud or money laundering inside their companies.
"Corruption is the cancer at the heart of so many of our problems in the world
today," Mr Cameron wrote in the Guardian ahead of the summit.
"It destroys jobs and holds back growth, costing the world economy billions of
pounds every year.
"It traps the poorest in the most desperate poverty as corrupt governments
around the world siphon off funds and prevent hard-working people from getting
the revenues and benefits of growth that are rightfully theirs."
The head of the Cayman Islands' main finance organisation has questioned
whether a public register of the owners of businesses in offshore centres would
be effective.
Jude Scott, the head of Cayman Finance, told the BBC's economics editor, Kamal
Ahmed, that they and the British Virgin Islands had already agreed to share
such details with tax authorities and law enforcement bodies to tackle tax
evasion and money laundering.
Mr Scott said the register would only be really effective if it was global and
all G20 and international financial centres took part.
In an interview with the Financial Times on Wednesday, Wayne Panton, the Cayman
Islands' minister of financial services, said a public register would also only
work if the information was verified.
He said the Cayman Islands had required company providers to collect and verify
information for the past 15 years, but he ruled out putting it into the public
domain.
'Battling hard'
The anti-corruption summit is being hailed as the first of its kind, bringing
together governments, business and civil society.
It is being hosted by Mr Cameron. No full list of those attending the Lancaster
House summit has been published, but participants will include US Secretary of
State John Kerry, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and Afghan President
Ashraf Ghani.
No detailed agenda has been made public, but organisers say it will agree ways
to "expose corruption so there is nowhere to hide".
The summit has already been overshadowed by controversy after it emerged that
Mr Cameron had described Nigeria and Afghanistan as "fantastically corrupt".
He made the comment while talking to the Queen at Buckingham Palace and his
words were caught on camera.
The PM later said the countries' leaders were "battling hard" to tackle the
problem.
Tackling corruption
Asked ahead of the anti-corruption conference in London if Nigeria was
"fantastically corrupt", President Buhari, who came to power last year on a
promise to fight corruption, replied: "Yes."
Mr Buhari, speaking at a separate event hosted by the Commonwealth, said he was
more interested in the return of stolen assets held in British banks, adding
that corruption in Nigeria was endemic and his government was committed to
fighting it.
Mr Hancock defended Mr Cameron's remarks.
"He (President Buhari) said the Prime Minister was telling the truth and the
reason the President of Nigeria has come to this summit is because he is fully
committed to tackling corruption in Nigeria. Indeed he won an election based on
tackling corruption".
Mr Hancock said it was up to countries such as the UK to work with developing
nations to make sure money taken from them is not hidden in assets in capital
cities such as London.