Taylor Scott International News
The UK Government is being urged to launch a promised policy to make ownership of property in the UK fully transparent and deliver on its plan to make sure there is no laundered money going into the real estate market. With more buyers from countries like Russia, China and the Middle East looking to invest in property in London there have been concerns that unscrupulous buyers could be using property to hide their wealth and assets. In July the Government committed to tackling corrupt money in UK property, but so far it has not published plans or a timeline for their consultation on providing more transparency over foreign and offshore ownership of UK property. Now the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) and Transparency International are calling for the consultation to get underway as quickly as possible. Mark Hayward, NAEA managing director, said that a recent documentary From Russia with Cash demonstrated that there is still not absolute clarity in relation to anti-money laundering among those in the property sector, despite the very clear legislation in place and regular training and updates from within the industry. ‘It is now time to step up the level of scrutiny that the sector comes under to ensure that a small minority of agents do not support criminal activity and those that do are appropriately sanctioned,’ he added. Taylor Scott International
Taylor Scott International, Taylor Scott
