Rishi Sunak says ‘all crimes’ must be investigated — so why is he blocking plans to go after fraudsters, cronies, and kleptocrats?
by marketrent
Rishi Sunak says ‘all crimes’ must be investigated — so why is he blocking plans to go after fraudsters, cronies, and kleptocrats?
by marketrent
3 comments
He means all crimes committed by the great unwashed.
He means the crimes that poor people do like stealing garden gnomes and writing “tits” on toilet walls.
Proposed amendments to the the Government’s Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill would represent a “huge step forward” in how we approach economic crime in Britain, the UK Anti-Corruption Coalition says.
Here are the key amendments being opposed by the Government:^1
>**Amendment 23: Tabled by crossbencher Lord Vaux**. Lord Vaux’s amendment would make it easier for enforcement agencies to identify the real owners of companies – who can currently hide behind placeholder “nominees” appointed by the wealthy.
>If passed, it would require a person or firm holding shares as a nominee to be publicly identified, by naming the person (or people) on whose behalf the shares are held. And there’d be a new offence for those failing to declare themselves.
>**Amendment 117: Tabled by Conservative peer Lord Agnew**. This amendment aims to close a loophole that allows “bad actors” to continue hiding behind offshore companies.
>To shine a light on who owns UK properties via offshore firms, the move aims to close a loophole in an earlier piece of legislation (the last Economic Crime Bill) that was expedited through parliament following Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine.
>**Amendment 151: Tabled by Conservative peer Lord Garnier**. Despite its national pledge to investigate every crime, the Government has proposed far-reaching exemptions for a new “failure to prevent” fraud offence, set out in the Economic Crime bill.
>The new offence would, in theory, make it much harder for professionals, like bankers and accountants, to turn a blind eye to clients’ wrongdoing, in the face of a new legal responsibility to carry out proper checks.
>**Amendment 159: Tabled by Conservative peer Lord Garnier**. This one aims to extend the new “failure to prevent” fraud offence (see above) to include money laundering, a crime that is estimated to cost the UK around £100bn annually.
>**Amendment 161: Tabled by Conservative peer Lord Agnew**. This one would, backers argue, give law enforcement more confidence to go after “deep-pocketed oligarchs and criminals with expensive lawyers.”
^1 https://bylinetimes.com/2023/08/31/rishi-sunak-says-all-crimes-must-be-investigated-so-why-is-he-blocking-plans-to-go-after-fraudsters-cronies-and-kleptocrats/