A Transparency International report claims that 14% of all LLPs ever incorporated (21,000) show money laundering red flags. Its report comes as the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill nears its parliamentary debate on 13 October.
Red flags noted include:
- having one or more corporate partners in one of 21 high-risk jurisdictions, registered at addresses with often thousands of identikit LLPs with the same partners;
- 948 suspect LLPs were registered at an address 100m from Companies House and another 2444 in an office building 10 minutes walk from the Birmingham ICC;
- having 10 or fewer partners, relatively few, if any, of whom are natural persons;
- partners spanning many LLPs;
- data on PSCs, where held, being either non-compliant or relating to a natural person based in the former Soviet Union.
TI is calling on the Government to:
- get Companies House reform right first time;
- ensure an effective first line of defence against economic crime; and
- create a credible deterrent against abusing UK companies for economic crime.