UK tackles ‘dirty’ property at anti-graft meet

British Prime Minister David Cameron kicked off a global anti-corruption summit on Thursday with a plan to stop the flow of dirty money into London property, but faces calls to do more to open up Britain’s overseas tax havens.

Mr Cameron is pushing for new international commitments on tackling corruption from almost 50 nations and overseas territories attending the summit, including the leaders of Nigeria and Afghanistan, and US secretary of state John Kerry.

“Corruption, writ large, is as much of an enemy because it destroys nation states as some of the extremists we’re fighting,” Mr Kerry said, describing the summit as “the beginning of something different”.

The meeting comes amid public outrage over the revelations in the Panama Papers, which lifted the lid on the large-scale use by global elites of anonymous companies to shield their wealth. They put the spotlight on Britain by highlighting the role played by its overseas tax havens and British lawyers and accountants, and revealing how many offshore firms are used to buy London property.

Under a new plan intended to combat money-laundering, foreign firms that own more than 1,00,000 British property titles will have to reveal their true owners.

Any foreign firms buying new property or bidding for government contracts would also have to appear on a new public register of so-called beneficial ownership, which goes live in June.

But Mr Cameron is under pressure to go further in addressing the secrecy in offshore financial hubs such as the British Virgin Islands, where more than half of the firms revealed in the Panama leaks were incorporated.

“Legitimate business has no need for anonymous companies. Please ban them,” Mo Ibrahim, the Sudan-born telecom tycoon whose eponymous foundation pushes for greater governance in Africa, urged the Prime Minister.

A short walk away from the summit, activists set up a “tropical tax haven” in London’s Trafalgar Square, complete with sand, palm trees and financiers in suits and bowler hats reclining in deck chairs.