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Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill and corporate transparency and register reform white paper

03 March 2022

Yesterday, the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill was introduced in parliament for its first reading.

The Bill will create a Register of Overseas Entities to crack down on foreign criminals using UK property to launder their money. The new register will require anonymous foreign owners to reveal their real identity to ensure that criminals can't hold property behind secretive chains of shell companies. This will apply retrospectively to property bought by overseas owners up to 20 years ago in England and Wales and since December 2014 in Scotland. The Register will be held by Companies House, with support from the UK’s Land Registries.

Yesterday’s Bill will also reform Unexplained Wealth Orders. It will remove key barriers to their use by law enforcement and will include amendments to financial sanctions legislation, helping to deter and prevent breaches of sanctions.

The government has also published a white paper which sets out a comprehensive package of reforms to Companies House. Reform of Companies House will form part of further legislation which will be introduced in the coming months via a further Economic Crime Bill to clamp down on illicit finance, improve corporate transparency and directly support the millions of legitimate enterprises which transact with Companies House every day.

The reforms will mean:

• anyone setting up, running, owning or controlling a company in the UK will need to verify their identity with Companies House
• Companies House will be given the power to challenge the information that appears dubious, and will be empowered to inform security agencies of potential wrongdoing
• company agents from overseas will no longer be able to create companies in the UK on behalf of foreign criminals
• the quality of information provided by companies to Companies House will be improved, so that the thousands of small companies who rely on it to make business decisions can trust who they are doing business with
• filing processes for small businesses will be streamlined and digitalised
• company directors will be better able to protect personal information published by Companies House which might put them at risk of fraud or other harm
• new powers to seize crypto assets and bring them within scope of civil forfeiture powers to tackle the growing threat from ransomware and the use of crypto assets for money laundering
• strengthened anti-money laundering powers to give businesses more confidence to share information on suspected money laundering and other economic crime