President Sirisena was received at the Heathrow Airport by the Queen’s special representative Bruce Holder, who is the Deputy Lieutenant to Queen Elizabeth and Kathryn Colvin, Special Representative of the Ministry of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.
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A summit dedicated to tackling corruption hosted by the British Prime Minister David Cameron in London yesterday culminated in global pledges to prepare and publish registers of who really owns companies in a collective effort to crack down on money laundering. Banks, civil-society organizations and the International Monetary Fund are also attendingpot the gathering, which aims to produce a global declaration against corruption and break what Cameron has called the “taboo about tackling this issue head-on”.
“If we want to see countries escape poverty and become wealthy, we need to tackle corruption”.
It is now intended that Ireland will establish a Central Register for Beneficial Ownership information on Companies and on Trusts as part of the transposition of European Union legislation.
It said foreign companies owned about 100,000 properties in England and Wales and that more than 44,000 of these were in London. Importantly overseas territories such as the British Virgin Islands will not be forced to publish a public register.
There are also plans for a new anti-corruption co-ordination centre in London and a wider corporate offence for executives who fail to prevent fraud or money laundering inside their companies.
They have all agreed to have registers – with most also willing to automatically share the information with law enforcement and other agencies – but not to make them public.
“Corrupt individuals and countries will no longer be able to move, launder and hide illicit funds through London’s property market, and will not benefit from our public funds”, a statement said.
Meanwhile, Transparency International chair Jose Ugaz said: “This is a good day for the fight against corruption, but there is more to do”.
He said Britain’s overseas tax havens were now “ahead of many developed states” in openness.
“Today’s summit shows that the United Kingdom is ready to play a leading role in tackling corruption with important commitments such as increasing transparency of beneficial ownership”.
Allan Bell, chief minister of the Isle of Man, said real progress was impossible without the United States making its own tax havens more open.
There’s a lot of talk at a London anti-corruption summit about making island tax havens more transparent.
Meanwhile, campaigning group ONE lauded Cameron’s leadership on anti-corruption as strong and that the summit had taken important steps in the fight against corruption, but the job is far from over.
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Cameron hailed a new OECD announcement that Panama, the country at the heart of the leaks scandal, had agreed to comply with worldwide standards on exchanging tax information.
