Caroline Lucas – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Caroline Lucas on 2015-11-30.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies on tackling fraud and money laundering of the findings by Kroll in a report prepared for the National Bank of Moldova in April 2015 on fraud and money laundering in that country, that all but one of the limited partnerships involved had a registered place of business in Scotland; and if he will make a statement.

Anna Soubry

We are aware of the findings of the Kroll report which makes general observations based on publically-available records. We have not corroborated the accuracy and completeness of the report, but it raises broad issues we were aware of and are currently considering.

The Government takes the misuse of all UK business entities extremely seriously. This is why under the UK Presidency in 2013, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister secured agreement from the G7 countries to sign-up to ambitious proposals to tackle the abuse of companies and legal arrangements. Increasing transparency about who owns and controls UK companies is a vital step in creating an environment of trust and accountability.

From April 2016, UK companies and other entities will be required to create a register containing information of the people with significant control, including their name, month and year of birth, and service address. From June 2016, this information will be provided to a central register at Companies House and will be publically available.