The Public Bill Committee has invited written evidence on the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, which is due to start its scrutiny in the Public Bill Committee on 25 October, and to conclude by 24 November. The Parliament webpage is a useful reminder of the key elements of the Bill:
- Companies House reform: specifically
- requiring companies to have their registered office at a place where they can acknowledge and receive documents;
- requiring all PSCs to have their identity verified;
- requiring all companies to file profit and loss accounts;
- giving greater powers to the Registrar;
- Limited Partnership reform:
- requiring authorised corporate service providers to submit information about partners at the point of registration;
- requiring the registered office to be in the part of the UK where the partnership was registered;
- requiring updates and annual confirmations to be provided to the Registrar;
- better enforcement;
- application of criminal and civil asset recovery powers to cryptoassets;
- create certain new exemptions from the need to report SARs to
- enable any person carrying on business in the regulated sector to hand over or transfer money owed to a customer or client in order to end a business relationship, so long as they have carried out appropriate CDD and the amounts do not exceed the published threshold (proposed as £1,000); and
- enable persons in the regulated sector to operate an account when they know or suspect that part but not all is criminal property, unless to do so would take the value below that known or suspected to be criminal – with the purpose of, for example, allowing a customer to make payments out of a known legitimate salary amount; and
- better enable information sharing.