The United Kingdom is targeting Nigerian and Russian billionaires who own properties in London worth billions of dollars.
In a new law, offshore companies investing in the UK property market must declare their beneficial owners. This is in response to the Pandora Papers investigative reports, which identified 233 UK properties worth £350 million at current values secretly owned by 137 Nigerian politicians and business tycoons.
The new law, Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022, establishes the Register of Overseas Entities, held by the UK’s Companies House. The register requires foreign companies that own, sell or buy property, to declare their beneficial owners, thereby making it possible to check the sources of funds used to acquire such property.
Before the new provision, which came into force this month, individuals could launder suspicious funds through notorious secrecy and tax havens and hide behind shell companies incorporated in those havens to anonymously buy properties in the UK, especially the capital London.
The exposed Nigerian PEPs in our PT-FU collaborative investigation included Mohammed Bello-Koko, the chief executive of the Nigerian Ports of Authority; Gboyega Oyetola, Osun State governor; Stella Oduah, a senator and former minister; and Stella Ogene, a jurist.
They hid behind shell companies secretly incorporated in tax havens to anonymously acquire London properties, thereby evading enhanced due diligence in the UK and blocking the Code of Conduct Bureau in Nigeria to determine their true worth or if they had amassed wealth their legitimate incomes could not justify.
The UK had been criticised for paying lip service to combat international corruption by leaving a legal loophole allowing overseas companies to own property without having to declare their beneficial owners.
Delivering the 2021 anti-corruption lecture for Transparency International UK in London, WTO head and Nigeria’s former finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, condemned the UK for paying lip service to the fight against Illicit Financial Flows, IFFs.
She accused the UK of harbouring enablers, including bankers, lawyers, and estate agents, who cater to corrupt officials from Nigeria and other countries seeking investments in expensive London real estate through anonymous offshore shell companies.
Source:
DW Africa