Fighting Money Laundering May End Up Helping It

BCL partner John Binns discusses proposed reforms to Companies House aim to validate the authenticity of businesses, in his article published by The Times.

Here's an extract from the article:

What has Companies House got to do with money laundering? Few, perhaps, will see any obvious connection between the dry formalistic requirements for information and documents, nowadays largely available for free on a neat and easily navigable website, and the murky world of hiding the proceeds of fraud and other serious crime. But in a sense that is precisely the point. The UK's regime for requiring information from companies, which now extends to the details of their "persons with significant control" (PSC), carries with it an impression of transparency. The fact that companies are incorporated here will help those who encounter and do business with them feel confident that they are dealing with legitimate enterprises - even when they are not.