The gentleman concerned discovered that undoing the record however, was much more complex and effectively impossible except at great cost. Removing his name as an active director of the company required the completion and submission of a form confirming that he had not agreed to act as a director of the company. Apparently his was one of 5,299 such forms sent to Companies House between April and December 2023 (an effective rate of over 7,000 per year!). What he subsequently discovered was that because he had been registered as a ‘person with significant control’ – the UK’s euphemistic title for ultimate beneficial owner or UBO – Companies House would not remove his details from the register. The only way to achieve this would be for him to obtain a court order costing hundreds of pounds. His details are still visible to the public as both a former director and UBO on the Companies House website albeit that the company has now been dissolved.
The reason for my letter is to remind everyone that the UK is a far easier jurisdiction to perpetrate fraud in and actually has absolutely no idea whether any of the information on its register of companies and other entities is accurate and meaningful compared to the position in Guernsey and the other crown dependencies. The Companies House website actually states on its home page ‘Companies House does not verify the accuracy of the information filed’. Registering a company with a director and UBO who knew nothing about it, is a crime in Guernsey and what’s more the only people who are able to do so are regulated by the GFSC and such matters are policed and enforced.
Our government should continue to resist the urges of UK politicians, like Dame Margaret Hodge, to make our registers of beneficial ownership public until the UK brings its own laws into a comparable position of regulating fiduciary businesses and both policing and enforcing proper records in its own registers. Our former data protection commissioner, Emma Martins, often explained why privacy is important and should be protected and anyone who thinks otherwise should consider how they would feel if the government decided that it would be in the common good to publish lists of all taxpayers and the amount of tax they pay. Then your neighbours could look at the list and wonder how you could afford your extension/swimming pool/car/holiday when you paid so little tax.
The only genuine requirement for access to registers of beneficial ownership comes from law enforcement, regulators and related bodies and Guernsey already provides that with a register which is 100 times more accurate that anything in the UK. We should defend our economy from those who suggest that we are the weaker link when they refuse to invest in appropriate laws and regulations which already exist here.
Andrew Guille
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