Criminals may own much of the UK’s elite property

Some of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious homes are secretly owned by shadowy investors who purchased them through anonymous companies registered in offshore tax havens, according to new research conducted by transparency advocates Global Witness.

The international NGO that highlights corruption and human rights abuses out of its offices in London and Washington, claims more than 100 billion pounds worth ($133 billion) of property in England and Wales is owned by such landlords.

The organization said, of the 87,000 such properties it found in Britain, around 40 percent were in London.

Elite addresses are the most likely ones to be owned by these secrective investors, according to the group. Global Witness said it found 134 such secretly owned properties in London’s Cadogan Square, in the affluent Knightsbridge area of the city. Average properties in that location typically cost around 3 million pounds. The organization claimed some 350 million pounds worth of property in London’s exclusive Buckingham Palace Road was also secretly owned.

Global Witness believes some of the secretly owned properties highlighted in its report are in the hands of criminal gangs and people who have misappropriated funds from around the world.

“It’s increasingly clear that UK property is one of the favorite tools of the criminal and corrupt for stashing and laundering stolen cash,” said Ava Lee, a senior anti-corruption campaigner at Global Witness. “This analysis reveals the alarming scale of the UK’s secret property scandal.”

Lee said the UK government is on the cusp of taking action that will make it harder for people to use the country to launder ill-gotten gains and she urged politicians to get on with it.

“Parliament is reviewing a draft law that could force these secret owners out of the shadows,” she said. “We’re calling on the government to table this legislation as quickly as possible, so we can find out who really owns so much of the UK.”

The government promised during an anti-corruption summit in 2016 that it would introduce a register of UK property owners but has since made slow progress on the project.

Global Witness believes criminals and corrupt politicians have used the UK property market to launder dirty money and create valuable bolt-holes for themselves and their families.

In 2015, Global Witness claimed to have proof that a police chief from Kazakhstan who was accused of murder, torture, and money-laundering was the secret owner of 147 million pounds worth of property in London that he owned through a network of offshore companies.

Contact the writer at earle@mail.chinadailyuk.com