Looking forward to 2019, Martin Kenney says campaigners hold a very firm assumption that public UBO registers are fundamental for transparency. “I will continue to tell them that they are incorrect,” he says.
The UK’s National Crime Agency said there were now signs that criminals were finding new tax havens where they could exploit lax regulation and hide their links to corrupt assets.
Martin Kenney is scathing about an alleged $8.3 billion Danske Bank money laundering scandal via Estonia, which partly relied on false data being submitted to the UK’s Companies House. The bank’s punishment so far? A “stern ticking off.”
Public UBO registers are only as good as the information provided by those required to furnish it.
Having browbeaten the House of Commons into enacting a statute seeking to impose public ultimate beneficial ownership registers on the United Kingdom’s overseas territories, such as the Virgin Islands, there are moves afoot to legally fortify this legislative decision by declaring it under the heading of national security.
Russia and its oligarchs are not alone in their kleptomaniac, money-laundering endeavours.
