Cameron launches crackdown on 'dirty money' from abroad

David Cameron will promise to crack down on corrupt foreign companies amid growing fears that the British property market has become a safe haven for "dirty money" from around the world.

Speaking during a visit to Singapore, the Prime Minister will launch a campaign to expose "anonymous shell companies" using laundered cash to buy property in the UK, especially in London.

"I want Britain to be the most open country in the world for investment," he will say. "But I want to ensure that all this money is clean money. There is no place for dirty money in Britain."

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Under the new proposals, details of all foreign-owned land and properties in England and Wales will be published for the first time this year in an effort to increase transparency, The Times reports.

Hundreds of billions of pounds are being laundered in London every year, according to the National Crime Agency. Donald Toon, the agency's director of the economic crime command, said he believed that this money had helped to push up property prices in the capital.

One in 10 properties in the City of Westminster are owned offshore, while properties totalling £120bn in England and Wales are registered in an offshore secrecy jurisdiction.

Earlier this year, an investigation by Transparency International, a non-governmental organisation that monitors and publicises corporate and political corruption, found that anonymous shell companies are a common way of moving laundered money around the world.

"The corrupt are helped to buy properties by lawyers, accountants and estate agents who do not ask where the money is coming from – which by law in most countries, including the UK, they are supposed to do," the organisation said.

Anti-corruption campaigners have welcomed the measures. Chido Dunn of Global Witness told Sky News: "Some of the Gaddafi family’s stolen loot ended up in London – a famous example but far from a one-off."

"Unless we know who is behind these companies and where their money has come from, the cash will keep pouring in."