UK expected to put pressure on island over public registers
The UK government is preparing to ramp up pressure on Guernsey and the other Crown Dependencies over public access to registers of beneficial ownership in 2025.
Home Office minister Dan Jarvis said in a written response to a question from fellow Labour MP Phil Brickell, published just before Christmas, that the government continued to see public access to registers as ‘a critical tool for tackling illicit finance’. And he expected to be discussing the issue with Guernsey politicians during 2025, he said.
‘The Home Office continues to work with the Crown Dependencies to help improve their beneficial ownership transparency and welcomes the commitments the Crown Dependencies have made for greater corporate transparency; the Crown Dependencies are working towards implementing legitimate interest access to their registers, including access for media and civil society,’ Mr Jarvis said.
‘However, this government is committed to tackling illicit finance and expects this to be an interim step to public registers.
'I look forward to meeting with the Crown Dependencies in 2025 to discuss this ongoing agenda.’
The Crown Dependencies’ relationship with Westminster is through the Ministry of Justice but the Home Office leads on illicit finance liaison.
Mr Jarvis noted that the islands share data from their beneficial ownership registers with UK law enforcement.
A year ago Guernsey, alongside Jersey and the Isle of Man, agreed to do more to improve access to information from registers of beneficial ownership to meet the UK’s plans for interim progress.
The agreement was to work to define ‘legitimate interest’ access, in line with international obligations, by the fourth quarter of 2024, and, once agreed, implementation should follow in ‘a reasonable time-frame’.
There have been no public announcements of progress secured since then.
