The United Kingdom should standardize beneficial-ownership requirements across its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, an international watchdog group said Monday.
In a new report titled Unlocking Ownership Data, Transparency International UK outlines gaps and discrepancies in the anti-money laundering regime of the country’s offshore financial centers, and proposes new guidance on how the governments could better collect and share information on the individuals controlling shell companies and other legal entities.
Proposals include:
- a uniform, FATF-aligned definition of beneficial owners that allows for the identification of a natural person who owns or controls a legal entity
- new obligations for companies and beneficial owners to keep reported information up-to-date
- standards requiring a centralized ownership register to be digitally accessible, with a full accounting of amended reporting and the assignment of unique identifiers for reporting entities
At least 237 major corruption and money-laundering cases have been tied to legal entities in the UK’s Overseas Territories, diverting roughly £250 billion across 79 jurisdictions, according to the watchdog group, which plans to release a technical assessment benchmarking key territories against its guidance later this year.
“As this UK Government prepares to host an international summit on illicit finance – and the Foreign Secretary seeks to end what he has called the ‘golden age of money laundering’ – meaningful access to beneficial ownership registers is not optional,” the organization said. “Without decisive action, illicit wealth will continue to flow through the UK’s backdoor, enabling organized crime groups and kleptocrats to conceal assets, evade sanctions, and undermine the UK economy.”
Read more from Transparency International here