But after Cameron described Nigeria and Afghanistan as “fantastically corrupt”, a senior British official said Britain would not be lecturing other countries.
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Mr Cameron made the unguarded comments in a conversation with the Queen. Mr Ghani, who is attending the conference, said he had no issue with what the PM said about his country.
The meeting has drawn a wide array of politicians from around the world, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the presidents of Afghanistan, Nigeria and Colombia.
Buhari said “When it comes to tackling corruption, the worldwide community has unfortunately looked away for too long”.
“We are certainly talking hundreds of millions of pounds worth of illicit money that made its way to the London property market and elsewhere”, Bowes said.
Cameron has said companies that own property in the United Kingdom will have to be declared on a new register.
In practical terms, that would mean that companies buying or owning British property, or tendering for state contracts, would first have to supply information on “beneficial” – that is, real – ownership to a new public register.
They put the spotlight on Britain by highlighting the role played by its overseas tax havens and British lawyers and accountants, and revealing how many offshore firms are used to buy London property.
More than 40 countries signed a declaration to “pursue and punish” those who perpetrate or facilitate corruption, and individual nations agreed a range of initiatives to open up anonymous company ownership and recover stolen assets.
Eleven more countries have announced they will join up to a scheme, headed by the European Union’s five biggest economies and set up in response to the Panama Papers leak, to exchange information on beneficial ownership with other nations, but not publicly. Australia, New Zealand, Jordan, Indonesia, Ireland and Georgia announced initial steps towards similar arrangements.
Prime Minister’s Office in a release said the United Kingdom has also secured commitments from 20 other countries at the Summit to strengthen or reinforce legislation to ensure stolen assets can be recovered, including Switzerland, Nigeria, France, Germany and Afghanistan. Delegates discussed corruption in sport, but soccer governing body Federation Internationale de Football Association, wracked by a vast bribery scandal, is not at the meeting. Importantly overseas territories such as the British Virgin Islands will not be forced to publish a public register.
Mr Cameron said the problem needed driving out from “governments, from parliaments, from institutions, from businesses and from areas of national life like sport, where there has been, and there is such a problem”.
Mr Bell said he was able to make an early intervention while John Kerry and David Cameron were in the room and was able to explain that while the Isle of Man has done much work to comply with developing global standards, the United States still has a great deal to do.
Governments also vowed Thursday to cooperate on the recovery of stolen assets.
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“We now want to carefully consider whether the evidence justifies any further extension of this model to other areas of economic crime, so that large corporations are properly held to account”, the Ministry of Justice said in a statement Thursday.
