Buying upscale homes in the U.K. through trust funds and overseas-based companies is popular among the rich as a way to minimize taxes and protect privacy. The practice also makes it difficult for law enforcement and the courts to establish whether their owners bought them legitimately. Hundreds of billions of pounds classified as the proceeds of crime are laundered here every year and London’s surging property market is one of the more attractive ways to do it, according to the U.K. National Crime Agency.
Real estate’s role in laundering money is “not one we understand well enough by any stretch of the imagination,” said Donald Toon, director of the NCA’s economic crime unit. “We’re not saying that money laundering is endemic in the property market, but we are saying it looks like there’s a problem here.”…
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Buying upscale homes in the U.K. through trust funds and overseas-based companies is popular among the rich as a way to minimize taxes and protect privacy. The practice also makes it difficult for law enforcement and the courts to establish whether their owners bought them legitimately. Hundreds of billions of pounds classified as the proceeds of crime are laundered here every year and London’s surging property market is one of the more attractive ways to do it, according to the U.K. National Crime Agency.
Real estate’s role in laundering money is “not one we understand well enough by any stretch of the imagination,” said Donald Toon, director of the NCA’s economic crime unit. “We’re not saying that money laundering is endemic in the property market, but we are saying it looks like there’s a problem here.”
