Shadowy U.K. and Singapore Firms Won Over $200 Million in Uzbek Mining Tenders.

Trust structures allow tens of millions of dollars from the Uzbek state budget flowed to a British firm whose ultimate owners are completely hidden from the public.

HOW

Until a few months ago, 71-year-old British accountant Wendy Conroy looked like an improbable success in the world of Central Asian mining.

Her company, Lemixton Solutions, registered in East London, had won contracts worth more than $22 million from a major state enterprise in Uzbekistan to supply it with goods like steel pipes and aluminium sheets.

But something was odd: Lemixton has no website, just one employee, and no identifiable Uzbek office. And since 2021, the company has consistently filed dormant accounts — a status reserved for firms that have no significant financial transactions.

In fact, of course, Ms Conroy had nothing to do with this business.

• Her closest link to it is that her son was the founder of the registration agent that managed its paperwork.
• She was just a proxy.

That became clear when reporters contacted Ms Conroy for comment. In a matter of weeks, a flurry of updated filings changed the persons “with significant control” listed for the company:

• First to a prominent Uzbek ping-pong official,
• Then to a Colombian man.

Both had their respective tenures backdated to 2018. The new filings also reveal that the firm’s ownership involves a trust arrangement: The mysterious Colombian man may also not be its ultimate beneficiary.

WHAT WE LEARN

• The story shows that — for all the reforms that the British corporate registry Companies House has undergone in recent years — almost total opacity is still possible.

• Those reforms are real. In 2023, a major piece of legislation, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, promised to turn Companies House from a passive collector of information into an active gatekeeper.

• Company officials now face mandatory ID verification, and the agency has new powers to check and remove bad information.

• But this story reveals the numerous remaining gaps.

• Trusts have emerged as a weak point in previous reporting, and while new ID requirements may help ensure real people are registered as “persons with significant control,” these people don’t necessarily
• represent a company’s true owners — as the case of Wendy Conroy shows.

• The downstream effect is that, halfway across the world, tens of millions of dollars from the Uzbek state budget flowed to a British firm whose ultimate owners are completely hidden from the public.

• This leaves space for anyone who can afford to hire professional company administrators to take advantage.

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