Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-05-01
Topic: Law and Crime
Hannah Mary Bardell (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Thank you for letting me speak, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was not expecting to get in, so it is a real privilege to have the opportunity to bring up the rear of the debate I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for her steadfast work on this Bill. I also thank other Members across the House. In particular, we heard an excellent speech by the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), who spoke about SLPs and the negative impact—the devastating impact—they have had across the UK. I recently met a Moldovan human rights lawyer at the Council of Europe. Many Members will be familiar with the nefarious activities of the Moldovan Government and certain oligarchs. She—I will not name her—has experienced huge tragedy in her life, being separated from her young son in trying to fight the Government, who are using an SLP to launder money and are engaged in criminal activities The point about reputation is really important, not just for Scotland but for the rest of the UK. The Scottish name is being used, and misused, through a piece of legislation. By and large, those who use SLPs are doing so for legitimate reasons, but a few are spoiling it for the many. SLPs are increasingly being abused by money launderers because of their unique characteristics. The hon. Member for Oxford East mentioned the Russian laundromat case, which extracted £16 billion out of Russia between 2010 and 2014. There were 114 SLPs in the laundromat, two of which were core laundering vehicles. Progate Solutions no longer exists—the Sarajevo-based Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project uncovered that company and highlighted its activities—but it is still being used to launder money. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who has done a lot of work on this, described there being an "explosion" of SLPs. In terms of the statistics, 82% of all SLPs registered at the end of 2016 and 70% of SLPs incorporated during this period are registered at just 10 addresses Getting to the core of the issue of transparency, this is about how business is being done now. We look at gender pay reporting and the impact that that has had on business in this country. That is a move forward. It was interesting to hear some Conservative Members talking about resources for us to have the power to investigate these companies. Our very limited and stretched public resources are being used so that our trained taskforces can investigate them. If we bring about a more transparent system and more transparent laws, our vital resources can be directed towards other crimes to protect our citizens. This is fundamentally about protecting our citizens across the UK With regard to Companies House, it is important to put it on record that I do not think anybody would want to criticise the staff or the job that they do, but what has happened to some consumers cannot be right. I have had constituency cases where people have bought services or goods, the company has gone bust, and they are left with nothing—neither their money back nor the items. A constituent of mine followed the individuals concerned through their registration in Companies House, and discovered that they had set up a new company and started trading again within a few weeks. She was told by the police that there was nothing that she could do because this was an entirely legitimate practice. It cannot be right that people are allowed to do that. That is why we feel that new clause 2 is so important.