Corporate Structures and Financial Crime

Debate between Lord Mann and Pat McFadden

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Mann]

I will finish my introduction first, because banks are just one aspect of the problem and I want to focus on all aspects in my brief comments.

The problem is that we have opaque structures that mean that people can avoid tax and participate in illegal activities such as smuggling and money laundering. The amount of unregistered money involved is estimated by some analysts worldwide as being in excess of £20 trillion. A third of that is estimated to be directly linked with the European Union, and a third with UK Crown dependencies.

I will illustrate how the problem works. An individual sets up a firm in a country that keeps the names of directors a secret, then links that firm with another firm in a respectable place such as the United Kingdom, where the details of who owns a company do not have to be registered if it is owned by another company. They then set up nominees to be directors of the opaque firm, register with the corporate registry in the initial country, open a bank account for the original firm and funnel money through the firm in the legitimate area to the original firm in the opaque country.

There are many examples of that, and all areas of our national life, such as football, now seem to be covered by such structures. Whether it is illegal or legal, it is a major problem for transparency. We as legislators should be particularly concerned about any illegal aspects, and the banks have been at the forefront of those, as we have seen with the problems of money laundering. HSBC funded Iran with transactions involving £19.4 billion through shell companies over seven years, through the Channel Islands and the Cayman Islands. That broke sanctions but was incredibly hard to trace, because it happened through opaque shell companies

In the case of crime, in one year alone the same company funnelled £7 billion through the Mexican Zetas drug cartel, the biggest and most violent criminal agency anywhere in the world. Again, it did so through shell operations. Various mafias have also been involved.

The BBC’s “Panorama” exposed rather efficiently a woman called Lana Zamba, a Russian-born Cypriot yoga teacher, who was the director of a firm called Nomirex and 23 other UK-based firms. Records showed that those firms were inactive between 2007 and 2009, but “Panorama” demonstrated that £350 million had passed through them in that time.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his energy in securing today’s debate. In the cases he outlines, does he agree that the complexity of modern global banking should not be used as an excuse for ignorance by those charged with the stewardship of the banks, and that we should put in place regulatory—and if necessary criminal—sanctions to ensure that responsibility cannot be evaded on the basis of professed ignorance? Responsibility for running large global complex organisations must be taken by those in charge.

[John Mann]

My right hon. Friend makes a valid and relevant point about criminal sanctions. The banks’ uniqueness is that they are the channel for funds. Because things are recorded in this technological age, it is straightforward for banks to investigate themselves and see what is going on, so the plea of ignorance by those at the top is inexcusable.

What my right hon. Friend and I are saying, and what I interpret the Financial Services Authority to be saying, is that responsibility must be taken at the top. Pleading ignorance is simply not good enough. We are talking not about small, missed operations but about huge major operations that funnel vast amounts of money. It is easy for banks to identify and track such operations, yet they choose not to do so. There seems to be a particular problem of huge reputational risk to the City of London because banks based in the UK have been those most often caught out. However, I have produced a document that demonstrates that this is not simply a UK problem. In recent years, every one of the top 50 banks in the world has had this problem and experienced prosecutions or ongoing investigations into prosecutions.