More than two-thirds of British properties held offshore are still not publishing information about who really owns them despite a government initiative to increase transparency.
Research by the London School of Economics, University of Warwick and Centre for Public Data has found that “even law enforcement agencies do not know the true identities” of the owners of 109,000 properties.
The properties form the bulk of the 152,000 registered overseas, often in the British Virgin Islands and other “secrecy havens”, which do not declare their beneficial owners.
The researchers say the way the register has been designed leaves too many loopholes.
The study says that in 87% of cases, where ownership information was missing or inaccessible to the public, it was “due to deliberate choices by government to keep the information out of scope of the legislation, rather than rule-breaking by overseas companies”.
It says rule-breaking accounts for only 6% to 9% of cases. Another 4% to 7% comes from out-of-date or poorly documented records.
