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Analysing the UK Register

02/07/2021

Do we really know who own thousands of UK companies.  In 2018 Global witness found *:

  1. 4.1 million companies are now on the beneficial ownership register (3.7 million of these have disclosed at least one beneficial owner).
  2. 4 thousand beneficial owners are listed under the age of 2, including one who has yet to be born.
    • While technically entrepreneurial toddlers can be listed as beneficial owners, it seems impossible that they could be exercising effective control over the company right now.
  3. Over 40% of the beneficial owners of Scottish Limited Partnerships (SLPs) are either a national of a former-Soviet country** or a company incorporated there.
    • This compares to just 0.1% of all Limited Companies (by far the most widely used UK company type), and provides clear evidence that some types of companies are heavily marketed to citizens of former Soviet countries.
  4. 5 beneficial owners control more than 6,000 companies raising the question of whether some of these individuals are simply stooges put in place by the real owners.

* This analysis was undertaken with a snapshot of the data from Companies House accurate as of 24/1/2018

**Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine or Uzbekistan

https://www.globalwitness.org/en/blog/pursuit-hidden-owners-behind-uk-companies/

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