Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023

The Foreign Office declined to be interviewed for this documentary.

In order to help it seize Russian assets, the UK passed the Economic Crime Act.

The aim of the act is to help law enforcement identify and seize illicit money in the UK.

The recent Economic Crime Act, uh, basically passed into law that any trusts that are involved in the ownership, uh, network of a property now have to, um, declare the beneficial ownership to HMRC.

However, that trust register is not public, so we're not entirely sure what information is even on it or whether that information is verified or how effective it is.

Overseas trusts that own UK property will also have to register.

And I think that was borne out by a story which we covered in the podcast some time ago now, that there is an increase in mewling activity among older groups.

To disrupt established laundering infrastructures earlier, the regulator instructed firms to strengthen monitoring controls beyond initial receiving accounts and expand cross-institutional intelligence sharing under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023.

Now, let's turn our attention to the fraud news.

And it's the US where it's a roundup.

CH, yeah, yeah, Companies House, yeah, I think I've heard of them.

So I think if I take those two things together, you're referring to the huge reform programme that started a couple of years ago with the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act.

I am, Graham.

And in particular, the new identity verification regime, which has been running for almost a year now, which is plenty of time to start seeing if it's caused any long-term change in behaviour in respect of company registrations.

Um, now that sometimes worked.

And for example, you know, when we had, when we had Russian tanks on the border of Ukraine before the invasion, we were able to use that as leverage to get, um, the, uh, you know, the Economic Crime Act and then Acts to, uh, to, to go right up the political agenda.

So you can do it, um, but the problem is not one of importance.

In most cases, it's urgency.