Amid a backlash over the Panama Papers, Mr Cameron last month announced that the overseas territories and Crown dependencies – such as the British Virgin Islands and Jersey – had agreed to provide United Kingdom tax and law enforcement agencies with full access to company ownership details.
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“The longstanding Bermuda register is accessible to competent authorities by request, while few other countries even have such a register, and those that do, have not yet obtained the Bermuda standard in which the register is automatically updated on a continuous and timely basis”.
It will “provide worldwide co-ordination and support to help law enforcement agencies and prosecutors work together across borders to investigate and punish corrupt elites and recover stolen assets”, according to an announcement Thursday by British Prime Minister David Cameron.
The measures, meant to combat money laundering, were announced as Cameron seeks to build on public anger over the leaked Panama Papers to secure a new global commitment to tackle corruption at the summit.
“It traps the poorest in the most desperate poverty as corrupt governments around the world siphon off funds and prevent hard-working people from getting the revenues and benefits of growth that are rightfully theirs”. “Crucially, there are country-by-country commitments.to tackle the issues of corruption that people will be able to check up on and report back on”, he said. British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday called corruption a “cancer” at the heart of the world’s problems, while U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the corruption “pandemic” was as great a threat as extremism.
The summit Communiqué included new commitments on beneficial ownership information, as a number of countries pledged to create publicly available registers of ownership information, including Nigeria, Kenya, and France.
“The evil of corruption reaches into every corner of the world”.
Cameron is hosting representatives of about 50 states at the anti-corruption conference, including the presidents of Afghanistan and Nigeria, which he said were “possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world”, when he was caught on camera talking about the conference to Queen Elizabeth this week.
Thursday’s summit, which brings together leaders such as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and a deputy foreign minister from Russian Federation, is seen as a milestone in those efforts. “Corruption schemes investigated by our specialists generally involve more countries than just Ukraine”, the official said adding that Ukrainian and Polish agencies have very much in common in their functions.
“It has gone beyond the shores of Nigeria and many world leaders already know the implication of fighting corruption and that is why they have conveyed the summit”, he told Channels Television’s correspondent, Chukwuma Onuekwusi.
Afghanistan has fallen under his leadership in the index of corruption compiled by campaign group Transparency International to 166th – better only than North Korea and Somalia.
The PM is expected to meet with Mr Buhari and Afghan president Ashraf Ghani in the margins of the summit.
“England was the first to invent grand corruption in the 18th century”.
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“We commit to joining the pilot initiative for automatic exchange of beneficial information”.
