Catherine West – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Catherine West on 2016-01-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment he has made of the (a) number and (b) quality of Overseas Territories’ adoptions of public registers of beneficial ownership since his meetings with them on 15 June 2013 and his letter to them on 24 April 2014.

James Duddridge

The Government is in discussion with the Governments of the Overseas Territories on their plans to improve company transparency. The Territories have agreed to hold beneficial ownership information in central registers or similarly effective systems. Such systems will need to meet the following criteria: a) UK law enforcement and tax authorities must be able to access company beneficial ownership information without restriction, subject to relevant safeguards; b) These competent authorities should be able to quickly identify all companies that a particular beneficial owner has a stake in without needing to submit multiple and repeated requests; and c) Companies or their beneficial owners must not be alerted to the fact that an investigation is underway.