On 12 May 2016, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, declared a raft of announcements at the anti-corruption summit in London. The UK government is now pushing hard the message that the new PSC register (which it brought in earlier this year) is part of a wider anti-corruption agenda, rather than what it most likely is, which is a tool to identify and map ownership of assets to support the work of taxation authorities.
In March 2016 the UK government issued a discussion paper proposing an effective extension of something like the PSC regime to any overseas entity acquiring real estate in England and Wales. The recent announcement that it will progress these measures was fairly inevitable. However, there is as yet no clarity as to how such a regime would be effectively enforced, touching entities which may have no presence in the jurisdiction.
Edward Craft was quoted in The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones on the announcements at the anti-corruption summit.
For more information about the PSC Register and the Transparency and Trust agenda and Real Estate please see the " The PSC Regime: What this means for real estate" article.
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