Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari says he is not demanding “any apology from anybody” after UK Prime Minister David Cameron labelled his country “fantastically corrupt”.
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“Corruption is the cancer at the heart of so many problems we need to tackle in our world”, Cameron said as he opened the meeting.
That said, the issue of corruption in countries, such as Afghanistan and Nigeria, often relates more closely to a lack of institutions than tax evasion, and both nations have relatively new leaders, Buhari in Nigeria and Ghani in Afghanistan, that were elected on anti-corruption platforms.
Nigeria’s presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu said: “This is embarrassing to us, to us say the least, given the good work that the President is doing”.
He said the countries’ leaders acknowledged a corruption problem.
Cameron will announce that any foreign company that wants to buy United Kingdom property or bid for central government contracts will have to join a new public register of beneficial ownership information before they can do so.
Other milestones announced as part of the conference include commitments from France, the Netherlands, Nigeria and Afghanistan to launch their own public registers of company ownership, while Australia, New Zealand, Jordan, Indonesia, Ireland and Georgia will agree to take the initial steps towards making similar arrangements.
“You must completely ignore what you have read or heard about what the prime minister has said”, Grieve told the jury. “Together we will push the fight against corruption to the top of the worldwide agenda where it belongs”, he said.
David Cameron’s remarks during a conversation with Queen Elizabeth, caught on camera on Tuesday, have so far dominated the build-up to a global anti-corruption summit he is hosting on Thursday which Buhari will attend. “This is what I’m asking for”, Buhari said. The Nigerian political class as well as the civil and public services are largely corrupt, but not so with the vast majority of Nigerians including those in Britain, who are shaping the economy and progress of Britain.
He said Cameron himself is still grappling with the aftermaths of the publication of the so-called Panama Papers, which exposed illegal activity of his father in running an off-shore firm.
“It is an embarrassment a statement credited to the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, describing Nigeria as a “fantastically corrupt” country”.
Hodge said she was concerned that the British Virgin Islands and other tax havens under ultimate British control were not present at the summit, and that until such territories also had public registers of beneficial owners the problem would remain.
According to government figures, foreign companies own about 100,000 properties in England and Wales and with more than 44,000 in London.
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Allan Bell, chief minister of the Isle of Man – a British Crown dependency in the Irish Sea – said there wouldn’t be real progress unless the United States made its own tax havens, such as DE, more open.
