4 ms·

Britain widens Russian 'dirty money' crackdown with new law

throwawaymanbot 5y ago
FerretFred 5y ago
Coincidentally, I've started a petition on change.org to demand that UK political parties that accepted "donations" of Russian money to party funds pay that money to Ukraine to help defend and rebuild the nation. if BP can do it, our sleazy government can! Not sure if I'm allowed to post links, but it's at https://chng.it/qpZ6sq6vyz https://chng.it/qpZ6sq6vyz
euroderf 5y ago
There was a great idea posted recently on the nettle-l list; it just needs to be implemented universally, worldwide: A more effective weapon wd be an aggressive seizure of all wealth owned by offshore entities in Europe and North America. Then, let God sort em out, as the Green Berets used to say. Let people come forward from behind their façades of shell companies to reclaim it. That wd take years in the courts and the onus wd be on the wealthy and powerful to prove their rightful ownership, which of course wd defeat the purpose of coming forward as anonymity wd be lost. Well, it’s a thought experiment anyway, rather than a plan of action. It probably wdn’t ever happen because Russian wealth was only 1% of what the Panama paper uncovered. And the people in power everywhere wd find themselves “exposed.”
mikeyouse 5y ago
There's been a lot of debate in the US Web3 scene lately regarding the 'doxxing' of the Bored Ape Yacht Club founders after they raised a VC round of a few hundred million dollars (I only put doxxing in scare quotes because their names were public info in their corporate filings and anyone could have seen them). This all seems interrelated. I could be convinced otherwise, but I've never seen a balance of equities where allowing anonymous ownership was more valuable than public transparency. See this other story today out of Canada as well, turns out a Chinese billionaire friend of Xi owns over $150M dollars in Canadian real estate: https://globalnews.ca/news/8637896/xiao-jianhua-family-companies-150-million-toronto-real-estate/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8637896/xiao-jianhua-family-compa... I could be convinced that beneficial ownership registries that are public only to regulators is an okay middle ground, but it boggles the mind that we still let anyone anonymously accumulate assets where even regulators don't know the underlying owners.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > [I]t boggles the mind that we still let anyone anonymously accumulate assets where even regulators don't know the underlying owners. At this point, examining the property records too closely to unmask the anonymous or pseudonymous owners risks a collapse in real estate prices. Quite a lot of these properties are purchased not as an investment per-se (though rising property prices are nice), but as a way of exfiltrating capital from various regimes for a variety of purposes, such as in case the need arises to bolt from the authorities and assume a new identity offshore. If shell corporations, DBAs, and false identities can't be used to reliably shield assets in this way (or if the difficulty/cost of setting up and maintaining the facade rise too much) in a particular market, a lot of real estate will be sold and the capital moved elsewhere.
blunte 5y ago
Why did it take a war for them to decide to do this? It’s not like they just discovered who these people are and where their money came from.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Coincidentally, I've started a petition on change.org to demand that UK political parties that accepted "donations" of Russian money to party funds pay that money to Ukraine to help defend and rebuild the nation. if BP can do it, our sleazy government can! Not sure if I'm allowed to post links, but it's at https://chng.it/qpZ6sq6vyz https://chng.it/qpZ6sq6vyz

euroderf 5y ago

There was a great idea posted recently on the nettle-l list; it just needs to be implemented universally, worldwide: A more effective weapon wd be an aggressive seizure of all wealth owned by offshore entities in Europe and North America. Then, let God sort em out, as the Green Berets used to say. Let people come forward from behind their façades of shell companies to reclaim it. That wd take years in the courts and the onus wd be on the wealthy and powerful to prove their rightful ownership, which of course wd defeat the purpose of coming forward as anonymity wd be lost. Well, it’s a thought experiment anyway, rather than a plan of action. It probably wdn’t ever happen because Russian wealth was only 1% of what the Panama paper uncovered. And the people in power everywhere wd find themselves “exposed.”

mikeyouse 5y ago

There's been a lot of debate in the US Web3 scene lately regarding the 'doxxing' of the Bored Ape Yacht Club founders after they raised a VC round of a few hundred million dollars (I only put doxxing in scare quotes because their names were public info in their corporate filings and anyone could have seen them). This all seems interrelated. I could be convinced otherwise, but I've never seen a balance of equities where allowing anonymous ownership was more valuable than public transparency. See this other story today out of Canada as well, turns out a Chinese billionaire friend of Xi owns over $150M dollars in Canadian real estate: https://globalnews.ca/news/8637896/xiao-jianhua-family-companies-150-million-toronto-real-estate/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8637896/xiao-jianhua-family-compa... I could be convinced that beneficial ownership registries that are public only to regulators is an okay middle ground, but it boggles the mind that we still let anyone anonymously accumulate assets where even regulators don't know the underlying owners.

webmaven 5y ago
> [I]t boggles the mind that we still let anyone anonymously accumulate assets where even regulators don't know the underlying owners. At this point, examining the property records too closely to unmask the anonymous or pseudonymous owners risks a collapse in real estate prices. Quite a lot of these properties are purchased not as an investment per-se (though rising property prices are nice), but as a way of exfiltrating capital from various regimes for a variety of purposes, such as in case the need arises to bolt from the authorities and assume a new identity offshore. If shell corporations, DBAs, and false identities can't be used to reliably shield assets in this way (or if the difficulty/cost of setting up and maintaining the facade rise too much) in a particular market, a lot of real estate will be sold and the capital moved elsewhere.

blunte 5y ago

Why did it take a war for them to decide to do this? It’s not like they just discovered who these people are and where their money came from.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]