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Proposed laws will tackle economic crime and SLAPP lawsuits [1]
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Date: 2023-01
Every year, billions of pounds of dirty money wash through the UK economy. It’s a problem that successive governments have so far been unable – or unwilling – to properly crack down on.
The government hopes to change this in 2023 with the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, which is currently making its way through Parliament.
The legislation is intended to reform the role of Companies House, the UK’s register of firms, which, at present, is more like a library of information rather than a watchdog of corporate behaviour.
openDemocracy has previously revealed how the UK’s lax system allows criminals to operate right under the nose of Companies House, as well as how fraudsters have stolen the identities of government officials to set up bogus businesses.
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The new legislation will follow on from the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022, which was pushed through Parliament after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That allowed for tougher sanctions on individuals, provided a register of overseas owners of UK assets, and strengthened the law around unexplained wealth orders, whereby the state can confiscate suspected criminal assets without having to prove the exact origin of the wealth.
Labour’s Margaret Hodge, urged on by groups like Spotlight on Corruption and Transparency International, has drafted amendments to increase the scope of the new bill.
These amendments relate in particular to corporate responsibility and creating ways to make top executives much more accountable for the activities of their different operations and the money that flows through their organisations. They will, for example, make it illegal to fail to prevent fraud, including false accounting and money laundering.
The government has so far responded positively to the amendments, sparking hope among campaigners that the law will be significantly strengthened.
The bill, which has broad cross-party support, has finished committee stage in the House of Commons and should move to report stage early in the new year, before passing into law.
A bill to protect journalists?
London is not only awash with dirty money, it is also the world capital of abusive legal action against journalists – so-called ‘lawfare’ – according to research by the Foreign Policy Centre.
Campaigners have for years argued for reform of the law to protect free speech and democracy against what are known as SLAPP cases – Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.
A core feature of SLAPP cases is that they aren’t about justice, or the rights of the alleged issue at stake, but are instead a way of abusing legal process to intimidate journalists and organisations with draining legal fights and alarming costs.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/economic-crime-corporate-transparency-bill-proposed-slapp-legislation/
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