Property News · November 20, 2016

End London’s role as a clearing house for dirty money | Tristram Hunt


A modern-day Sherlock Holmes must unravel the flows of cash that skew the London property market at the expense of school and hospital-building in Kinshasa‘London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained” was what Sherlock Holmes’s companion, Dr Watson, thought of the capital. Well, this week a cross-party coalition of MPs will be trying to drain the mire of its dirtiest elements.The government’s criminal finances bill, with its crackdown on unexplained foreign wealth, secretive shell companies and high-level tax evasion, is a smart attempt to end London’s culture of money-laundering. But if we are really going to stop the capital’s property being used as a reserve currency by global kleptocrats, we have to go further. For London’s historic place at the heart of the empire has endowed it with the networks and skills, from the Square Mile to Caribbean tax havens, to become one of the world’s leading hubs for the dispersal and camouflaging of dubious funds. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…End London’s role as a clearing house for dirty money | Tristram Hunt

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