:...This information will be
made accessible to HMRC, the NCA and Border
Force. However, as it stands it will not be available for public
scrutiny; the Minister will correct me if I have got this wrong.
HMRC will spend little effort looking at what is happening in
free ports; by definition, there are no customs, duties or tax
requirements. Therefore, the NCA becomes, as it
were, the strongman for enforcement in this case. This led me to
look at the National Crime
Agency inspection report from July 2021. I will
quote from the summary—it was a fairly scathing report:
“There is insufficient capacity in the investigations command to
meet the demand being developed by the intelligence command and
the reactive demand (such as seizures at the border).”
In other words, we have a problem. The National Crime
Agency even without the addition of free ports, is
significantly underresourced and needs to upskill, although this
is less to do with the capacity of the people; there is also a
lack of technical resource. We are turning to that body at the
same time as introducing new avenues for money laundering and
other illicit behaviours.
This House and this Government have always taken the view that it
is the public nature of any register of beneficial ownership that
brings the necessary scrutiny and deterrence to make that
register effective. The UK already has a public register of the
beneficial ownership of UK companies, and the Government have
promised a public register of the beneficial owners of UK
property. In addition, the Government insist that they have been
working very hard to achieve public registers in the overseas
territories and Crown dependencies, so it seems really odd to
create a new situation here where one of the primary tools will
be a register of beneficial ownership that is not being made
public. At the very least, this undermines those discussions with
the overseas territories and the Crown dependencies.
I would very much like the Government to have a rethink and see
whether they can make this information publicly available, at the
very least. It would also be really helpful to know whether some
additional resource will be put into the National Crime
Agency because without that we will be on a very
uncomfortable wicket in this world where money laundering is
frankly a growth industry, not a declining one...
To read the whole debate, CLICK HERE
