Jersey Finance welcomes PM's London property money laundering crackdown

Wednesday 29 July 2015

David Cameron’s plans to crackdown on offshore companies using the London property market to launder money have been welcomed by Jersey’s finance industry.

Geoff Cook, the Chief Executive Officer of Jersey Finance, has welcomed Mr Cameron’s speech on corruption and money laundering in Singapore – saying that Jersey welcomed “a level playing field”.

The UK Prime Minister’s speech promised to introduce a central land registry in the UK and signalled a consultation on a full register of “beneficial ownership” of properties setting out exactly who really owns what.

His speech was made during the current four-day tour of south-east Asia, and the speech made headlines across the national papers in the UK.

It referred to the fact that 36,342 properties across London are owned through offshore companies – and campaigning organisation Transparency International has found that 16% of those companies are based in Jersey.

Most of those companies are legitimate investments by people seeking to take advantage of the incredible property boom in the last few years - but a significant number of purchases have been investigated by police over corruption, and money laundering attempts.

Mr Cook has welcomed the speech – and has pointed out that Jersey’s record on recording beneficial ownership was actually ahead of the UK’s, and was deemed a model arrangement by the World Bank.

He said: “So far as Jersey is concerned, it welcomes moves to establish a level playing field in clamping down on money laundering and corrupt activity.

“For its part, Jersey leads on current international standards through operating a central registry that is deemed a best practice model by the World Bank, and through regulating all corporate service providers, who have a legal obligation to ensure that accurate and up to date information is held on the real owners of companies, trusts and bank accounts, meaning that Jersey’s ability to capture ownership information of companies is far ahead of that available in other jurisdictions, including the UK.

“Against that backdrop, Jersey is very much part of the solution in ensuring high quality flows of international investment into the UK, including property structuring.”