UK property is NOT for ‘Dirty Money’

There are lots of ‘property linkages’ between London and Malaysia. Malaysian developers are in London, developing many new and iconic projects. These include SP Setia’s Battersea, IJM’s Royal Mints Garden and Eco World’s Ballymore. Malaysians are also property investors in London, especially for those buying for their children who would be studying there in future. According to David Cameron who’s visiting a few ASEAN countries, the Prime Minister of the UK said that there are however some signs that property acquisitions have been used to launder ‘dirty money.’ For example, corruption money from many countries are being legalised in London’s property market. He said, “Foreigners must not be able to buy UK homes with “plundered or laundered cash” as part a global effort to defeat corruption” He went on to vow that he would expose the use of “anonymous shell companies” to buy luxury UK properties – often in London.
While he did not say what would be the actual actions being taken but currently there are more than 100,000 UK property titles registered to overseas companies. Within London alone, there are more than 36,000 properties in London owned by offshore firms. In total, there are about
£122bn of property in England and Wales owned by offshore companies.
He said that majority of foreign-owned business investing in Britain had “nothing to hide” and were welcome but there must be rules to make transparent all those who are trying to launder money. This will allow them to be tracked down.
I would personally love to see what are the next steps being taken. Also, how would the enforcement be carried out successfully. Truth is, £122 billion is a huge number and even if just a small part belong to these ‘ill-gotten gains,’ we are still talking about billions. Honestly, this affects not just Britain but many other popular property markets in the Western world today. I would like to ask David Cameron to share his steps with all the rest of the countries which are also affected by these money laundering activities. This will allow a concerted effort and not just push it away from London property markets into some other property markets. Happy tracking.
written on 2 Aug 2015
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