The United Kingdom will establish within three years a publicly available register of individuals who acquire residences through offshore firms and other legal entities in efforts to staunch the flow of suspicious funds into the British property market, a minister announced Wednesday.
The United Kingdom will implement the European Union’s upcoming Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, or 5AMLD, despite planning to exit the bloc in 2019, an HM Treasury official said Monday.
One of the first priorities of the new U.K. Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision will be to ensure that certain professions outside the traditional banking sector contribute more towards national efforts against financial crime, says a senior official.
Only three of the European Union’s 28 member states launched beneficial ownership registers by the bloc’s June 2017 deadline and many databases will not be fully searchable until 2018 at the earliest.
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