x
By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies to enhance your experience.

The knives are out between an anti-corruption organisation called Transparency International and the investment group London Central Portfolio - and there is no lack of hyperbole.

TI claims 36,342 London properties are owned by what it calls hidden companies registered in offshore havens.

The group's research - analysing data from the Land Registry and Metropolitan Police Proceeds of Corruption Unit - found that 75 per cent of properties whose owners are under investigation for corruption made use of offshore corporate secrecy to hide their identities.

"There is growing evidence that the UK property market has become a safe haven for corrupt capital stolen from around the world, facilitated by the laws which allow UK property to be owned by secret offshore companies" says Robert Barrington, executive director of the organisation.

This has a devastating effect on the countries from which the money has been stolen, and it's hard to see how welcoming in the world's corrupt elite is beneficial to communities in the UK he says, adding that the government should act to avoid the UK becoming the destination of choice for global corruption.

LCP's chief executive Naomi Heaton, however, is not to be outdone when she condemns what she calls loud, politically motivated dogma.

She asks: Where is the evidence

The many innocent people who hold property through off-shore companies, quite legitimately, and who run their affair's transparently and accordance with the UK tax legislation, may well have something to say about that. So may the pension funds and insurance companies.

Heaton - who said late last year that the new stamp duty thresholds would lead London's housing market into complete and utter collapse - accuses TI of attempting to tar everything with the same black stained, evil brush.

They indulge, without shame, in emotive language, describing these companies as off-shore corporate secrecy' and off-shore havens' thereby suggesting all sorts of skulduggery, whilst they may quite simply be a company in foreign ownership she says.

TI claims over £180m worth of property in UK has been brought under criminal investigation as the suspected proceeds of corruption since 2004 but insists this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Of the 36,342 London properties held by offshore tax haven companies, 38 per cent are held in the British Virgin Islands, 16 per cent in Jersey, 9.5 per cent in Isle of Man and 9.0 per cent in Guernsey

Some 9.3 per cent of properties in the City of Westminster, 7.3 per cent of properties in Kensington & Chelsea, and 4.5 per cent in the City of London are owned by companies registered in an offshore secrecy jurisdiction, TI believes.

Comments

MovePal MovePal MovePal