Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether the Government is taking steps to ensure that all Trust and Company Service Providers setting up companies in the UK are overseen by an anti-money laundering supervisor; and if he will make a statement.

The Government is committed to ensuring the UK is a hostile environment for illicit finance and has taken significant steps to tackle the threat of money laundering. The Government tightened the requirements on AML supervisors in the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 and legislated to establish an oversight body for professional body supervisors (the Office for Professional Body AML Supervision or OPBAS) in December 2017.

TCSPs undertaking business in the UK must be supervised by either the FCA, HMRC or a professional body. They are subject to the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 which strengthened the requirements on TCSPs by introducing a fitness and propriety test on beneficial owners, officers and managers, by requiring TCSPs to be registered with either the FCA or HMRC and by requiring them to undertake customer due diligence checks when forming a company, whether or not the formation is the only transaction being carried out for that customer. At an international level, the UK works with international partners and through the Financial Action Task Force to drive up global standards of supervision and enforcement.