Recommendation 56

HM Government · verbatim extract Accepted

The UK continues to be a global leader in beneficial ownership transparency. Thanks to UK leadership, the FATF has agreed an ambitious new global requirement that will require countries to in effect create registers of ultimate ownership of companies, improving transparency of company ownership and preventing abuse of corporate structures, building on the UK’s leadership as the first major economy to establish a public register of company ownership. The Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act will introduce the Register of Overseas Entities Beneficial Ownership, requiring anonymous foreign owners of UK property to reveal their real identities, ensuring that they cannot hide behind secretive chains of shell companies. The government is working at pace to ensure these requirements come into force as soon as practicably possible, now we have received Royal Asset. The government also brought forward amendments to shorten the deadline for overseas companies holding UK property to register their beneficial owners from 18 months to 6 months, and to require any overseas entity disposing of their property in the period from 28 February and the date of their application to register to provide information about the entity’s beneficial ownership immediately before the disposal. These changes will help crack down on money laundering and sanctions evasion through UK property, whilst giving people who hold their property in overseas entities for legitimate reasons appropriate time to comply with the new requirements. The register will set a new global standard for transparency and enhance the UK’s already strong reputation as an honest and trusted place to do business. I am writing to you following the Treasury Committee’s report, ‘Economic Crime’, published on 2 February 2022 (the report). We welcomed the opportunity to provide evidence to the Committee’s inquiry both in writing and in person and read the resulting report with interest. As we set out in our written evidence, as the financial services and markets conduct regulator, as well as the money laundering supervisor for the financial sector, we have a crucial role in reducing fraud. Our approach to fraud and scams is based on prevention, the protection of consumers and the pursuit of fraudsters who operate within our perimeter to create a safer financial services sector which consumers have confidence in. We maintain a coordinated approach involving law enforcement and regulators working with the National Economic Crime Centre (NECC). We work closely through the NECC to share data and intelligence where we identify criminal misconduct, where appropriate using law enforcement gateways to share information We would encourage law enforcement agencies to make more use of the NECC in order to share intelligence with the FCA where they have evidence of fraud which is connected to or enabled by the firms we regulate.