Money laundering . . .

[stockhausen]

Three London homes worth more than £80m have been frozen by the High Court in the second-ever use of anti-corruption orders to stop foreigners laundering cash in the UK.

The Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs) were sought last week against a foreign official who was not named in court. The National Crime Agency has demanded that the subject of the probe explains the source of their wealth.

The homes cannot be sold or given a new owner until the investigation is over. The properties are held by offshore companies. (LINK)

Why does the British Government consistently turn a blind eye to this corruption by "foreign officials" (AKA Crooks)?

I gather that there are any number of tower blocks in London where there are no lights on in any of the windows at night for 11 months of the year and the underground car parks are full of cars covered in dust sheets.

These properties should be handed over to local councils for social housing unless the owners can be identified as UK residents and the flats are occupied for 11 months of the year.

This entire business is a disgraceful scam orchestrated by Construction Companies and Bankers and tolerated by their friends and beneficiaries in Government.

 

[Pudney]

Why does the British Government consistently turn a blind eye to this corruption by "foreign officials" (AKA Crooks)?

I'm not sure your opinion is helped when you post an article describing the use of relatively new powers introduced by the British Government in order to combat corruption by foreign officials.

 

[jsmoke]

Your saying crims buy a tower block flat with their ill gotten gains as an asset ?

 

[wolfie138]

kinda confused - you say they turn a blind eye, but they've seized £80m worth of assets to investigate...?

 

[Scam]

kinda confused - you say they turn a blind eye, but they've seized £80m worth of assets to investigate...?

You guys didn't read to the end of the article then?

Robert Barrington, executive director of campaign group Transparency International, welcomed the latest UWOs - but said much more needed to be done.

He said: "London has long been the playground of the world's corrupt kleptocrats and oligarchs - it's very encouraging to see that this is at last being challenged."

"Two years ago we identified £4.4bn worth of UK property bought with suspicious wealth. From that list of around 150 cases, two have now been progressed."

He said the two cases represent "progress" but are "still an insufficient response to the magnitude of the problem".

2 cases and £80m of £4.4bn identified smacks of doing as little as possible whilst maintaining the illusion of "doing something"...

 

[Psycho Sonny]

the government has been cutting funds to public services for over a decade. which includes the ones that investigate these things. they have also frozen public servants wages for 13 years now. so they are understaffed and underpaid with little resources to work with. morale is at an all time low.

if you want this to improve then you have to be willing to write to your local MP, etc.

which I'm willing to bet you won't.

the only ones that have had the blocl lifted are the ones the public like and want improvements too. like NHS and police, etc. the other servants still haven't had a wage rise in 13 years. when you take inflation into account they have had a real world wage reduction for 13 years running.

 

[wolfie138]

You guys didn't read to the end of the article then?

no, he'd quoted what I assumed was relevant to his point.

 

[Pudney]

You guys didn't read to the end of the article then?

2 cases and £80m of £4.4bn identified smacks of doing as little as possible whilst maintaining the illusion of "doing something"...

It doesn't matter to the point that this goes directly against the claim that the government is "consistently turning a blind eye". The question of whether it is enough is completely different.

 

[M1k3H]

You guys didn't read to the end of the article then?

2 cases and £80m of £4.4bn identified smacks of doing as little as possible whilst maintaining the illusion of "doing something"...

Agree with you that £80m out of £4.4bn is a drop in the ocean, however, isn't that because the assets are owned by shell companies in tax havens, hence they can't identify the owners, hence they can't seize them?

 

[Pudney]

Agree with you that £80m out of £4.4bn is a drop in the ocean, however, isn't that because the assets are owned by shell companies in tax havens, hence they can't identify the owners, hence they can't seize them?

No, not really. We have information sharing agreements with a lot of tax havens, a lot of tax havens are British Overseas Territories after all. The issue is that the rules appear to apply to criminal activities by a specific category of persons (politically exposed persons for all you fun people out there who have to have some understanding of AML rules) and need agreement from the High Court, potentially applying the burden of proof in criminal cases. That's a significant workload and the NCA has finite resources and other matters to deal with as well.

 

[Scam]

Agree with you that £80m out of £4.4bn is a drop in the ocean, however, isn't that because the assets are owned by shell companies in tax havens, hence they can't identify the owners, hence they can't seize them?

Well the £4.4bn was identified as 'suspicious' so it stands to reason that probably all of that is owned by companies in tax havens. That's kinda the point. Hence why it's suspicious. I'm sure they're not going as simply as 'Oh it's owned by someone in the Cayman Islands, mark it up as suspicious' - they probably dig into it a little more than that.

I'm inclined to simply agree with the OPs sentiment;

This entire business is a disgraceful scam orchestrated by Construction Companies and Bankers and tolerated by their friends and beneficiaries in Government.

There's no need for individuals to buy mansions in Lonodn via shell companies or tax havens. In my mind if you're doing that you're hiding something.

We had another thread yesterday about barbers hiding money laundering. Every knows that's wrong but our property 'market' is so ****ed up, people have forgotten that buying a property via a shell company or company in a tax haven is exactly the same, but more endemic in this country and doing far more damage to our society regarding affordable housing. There's plenty of studies that have shown this type of behaviour is a massive cause of our housing crisis.

 

[M1k3H]

Well the £4.4bn was identified as 'suspicious' so it stands to reason that probably all of that is owned by companies in tax havens. That's kinda the point. Hence why it's suspicious. I'm sure they're not going as simply as 'Oh it's owned by someone in the Cayman Islands, mark it up as suspicious' - they probably dig into it a little more than that.

But isn't the whole point of a shell company to hide its owner? Hence they might know it's a shell company, but not who eventually owns that shell company. Some of these tax havens will have privacy laws in place meaning banks wouldn't be able to identify owners anyway.

Plus, these powers, as far I can tell, are to be used against people who are in political positions of power and might be defrauding their citizens and investing in the UK.

Again, I agree with the overall sentiment that the police should have the powers and resources to identify crime owned assets and seize them, but this isn't the case right now.

 

[M1k3H]

No, not really. We have information sharing agreements with a lot of tax havens, a lot of tax havens are British Overseas Territories after all. The issue is that the rules appear to apply to criminal activities by a specific category of persons (politically exposed persons for all you fun people out there who have to have some understanding of AML rules) and need agreement from the High Court, potentially applying the burden of proof in criminal cases. That's a significant workload and the NCA has finite resources and other matters to deal with as well.

I thought the whole purpose of shell companies is that a lawyer is the legal owner, hence they can't identify who the actual owner is? So even if you knew the legal owner, the lawyer would just say "client confidentiality" and that's that.

Or have I got it wrong?

 

[Roar87]

So you want to use the state to remove private property and redistribute it? There's a word for that but I can't quite remember it

 

[Pudney]

I thought the whole purpose of shell companies is that a lawyer is the legal owner, hence they can't identify who the actual owner is? So even if you knew the legal owner, the lawyer would just say "client confidentiality" and that's that.

Or have I got it wrong?

It depends really. To the public the generic answer is you have it right. If you went to search for the beneficial owner of a company you may well fail.

To the government things change due to information sharing agreements. For example, if the shell company is in Panama, then you're still right. However, if your shell company is in Bermuda, there is an information sharing agreement between the UK and Bermuda that permits Bermudan authorities (and I believe Bermuda has a private register of beneficial interests in its companies) to share details of beneficial owners to the UK government (i.e. it's departments such as the NCA or HMRC).

Shell companies can be used as a legitimate source of privacy for individuals from public scrutiny, but not governmental. An example would be a high profile individual who wants to keep their holiday homes private. If public privacy is important, but you're not being dodgy with anything, then a shell company in Bermuda may well be a great idea.

 

[Diddums]

So you want to use the state to remove private property and redistribute it? There's a word for that but I can't quite remember it

Ha! Imagine that. That’s one hell of a slippery slope. I do agree however that these shady bums using London as their little assets playground is unacceptable.

 

[Scam]

So you want to use the state to remove private property and redistribute it? There's a word for that but I can't quite remember it

I'm pretty sure the law of the land as it currently stands, is perfectly entitled to remove assets gained illegally. That's all this is. Just because a shady crim has enough money to set-up a shell company and teams of lawyers to successfully hide his assets, doesn't make it right. As a society we're perfectly entitled to do so, especially when it's destroying our housing market.

Let's not forget that these crims buying up multimillion properties is money laundering in it's purest form. And the ironic thing is the more they do it, the better return (capital gain as the market bubbles up) they make from it. So not-only are we legitimising their dirty money on a grand scale, we're allowing them to make more money out of it too. It's disgusting.

E.g. Talking about Russia for one example; https://youtu.be/UZfIJhSX9N0?t=132 London bankers are the "pin striped accomplices of Russian money-laundering"

 

[glenimp617]

You guys didn't read to the end of the article then?

Not a requirement in GD. Usually the headline is enough.

 

[bignev72]

I'm not sure your opinion is helped when you post an article describing the use of relatively new powers introduced by the British Government in order to combat corruption by foreign officials.

 

[Em3bbs]

Not a requirement in GD. Usually the headline is enough.

Often you're right, but when the OP quotes not just a headline, but a specific and significant part of the article with a tiny link to the whole thing at the end, you would kind of assume the OP wanted to discuss the part they pasted.