APPG on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax

2025 report: Clean Foundations for Growth — APPG on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax Some studies estimate it costs the UK a staggering £350 billion a year —the annual health and education budget combined. The UK government seeks to accelerate economic growth in an increasingly uncer...

5/ 📜 Read our report on how tackling economic crime could boost growth at a time when it's most needed - freeing up vital funds to be spent on causes that benefit society:

anticorruption-responsibletax.org/cleanfoundat...

And as ever, follow us 👆 for more updates.

4/ ⚖️ This gives the impression that rules are optional for those with the means to game the system.

💰 Communities across the UK pay their fair share, while billions that should be reclaimed from dirty money and tax abuse remain hidden.

3/ 🚔 The system may look tough, but this story shows improvements are urgently needed.

Bad actors can:

❌ claim there’s no beneficial owner
🏝️ hide behind other offshore companies
📝 park assets in a trust
🎲 or simply fail to register and gamble that nothing will happen. Too often, it's a safe bet.

2/ 🗣️ Our Chair @philbrickellmp.bsky.social says he's shocked at how this story "calls into question the integrity of the Register of Overseas Entities".

🏘️ The Economic Crime Act was passed for a simple reason: to stop oligarchs, tax dodgers and organised criminals hiding their loot in UK property.

Revealed: the foreign owners ‘hiding’ £190bn worth of UK property A new investigation uncovers what is likely to be a mass breach of the government’s anticorruption rules, involving almost 45,000 properties

🚨 🧵 1/ Alarming new report from The Times on how hundreds of billions of pounds' worth of property is still concealed behind offshore companies and trusts with no clear owner.

It remains far too easy to hide dirty money in plain sight in Britain.

www.thetimes.com/life-style/p...

Editors unite to demand Parliament takes action on SLAPPs Editors from national newspapers including The Guardian and The Times demand action on SLAPPs in next King's Speech.

❌ Wealth should not be able to be used to silence legitimate scrutiny. Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) have been used to intimidate journalists and others for far too long.

👍 We strongly support calls for universal anti-SLAPP legislation.

pressgazette.co.uk/media_law/an...

🔥 Top opportunity for a brilliant comms person with our good friends at Spotlight on Corruption.

The red flags are familiar: a politically exposed buyer, offshore structures, opaque finance, and an inflated price. We need enhanced beneficial ownership transparency, tougher checks on high-risk purchases, and real consequences the for enablers who facilitate them.

Andrew was paid millions by oligarch with funds from firm linked to bribery scheme Firm which part-funded Sunninghill Park purchase received

“Nobody is above the law.”

This excellent BBC investigation raises fresh questions about the UK’s exposure to dirty money in high-value property – including deals involving prominent public figures.👇

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Huge thanks to the SFO for hosting us. With the UK’s new Anti-Corruption Strategy and economic crime reforms strengthening the enforcement toolkit, we’ll continue working with them on a range of issues as their remit and workload ramps up.

The APPG has visited the Serious Fraud Office for a behind-the-scenes look at how it is tackling major bribery and corruption cases.

We heard directly from the leadership team, spoke with case controllers running investigations, and finished with a session on the Digital Forensics Unit.

❌ 6/ We will also be recommending a cap on the amount that individuals, companies and organisations are allowed to donate to politicians and parties.

For too long, our politics has been dependent on fewer and fewer, richer and richer donors.

💪 5/ Phil added: "The Elections watchdog has to be let off the leash and given the teeth it needs to hold those who threaten the integrity of our democracy to account. The Elections Bill must include measures to restore the independence of the Electoral Commission that was stripped away in 2022."

🗣️ 4/ Phil Brickell: "By its very nature, cryptocurrency has no place in our politics. It is hard to trace and a great way to break up larger donations so they fly under the radar. The Government must implement a total ban, before the horse has bolted."

🏛️ 3/ The review comes as the UK Government prepares to put its much-anticipated Elections Bill before Parliament.

Our APPG is pushing for some key policies to be included in that Bill, including a ban on crypto donations to political parties.

Former Reform in Wales leader Nathan Gill jailed for pro-Russian bribery Nathan Gill, 52, is sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison after admitting taking bribes while an MEP.

⚖️ 2/ As a reminder, Gill - former leader of Reform UK in Wales - was recently sentenced to 10.5 years, becoming the first politician to be jailed under the Bribery Act.

💰 He's thought to have received up to £40,000 for making pro-Russian statements and speeches.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Urgent review into foreign financial interference in UK politics An independent review, led by Philip Rycroft, into foreign financial interference in UK politics has been commissioned by the government.

🚨🧵 1/ We welcome the new urgent Government review into foreign interference in UK politics.

👍 Our Chair @philbrickellmp.bsky.social: "It's absolutely right that the Govt is reviewing our defences against foreign interference in light of Nathan Gill's bribery conviction."

www.gov.uk/government/n...

🎄 🎅 It's that time of year again!

Our Winter Newsletter is out now, with updates on the Government’s new Anti-Corruption Strategy and our work to tackle dirty money and tax abuse on the UK’s High Streets.

Read it here: mailchi.mp/fpc/winter-n...

So before the Global Illicit Finance Summit next June, we need to close these loopholes to show real global leadership – and practice what we demand of others: close secrecy gaps, enforce the rules, and ensure transparency across every part of the UK family.

The UK's claim to global leadership risks being critically undermined by such flows of dirty money through some of its own Overseas Territories. This also hampers development, weakens institutions, and enables organised crime and kleptocracy worldwide.

Before the launch, Phil and Lloyd Hatton MP led a Dirty Money Walking Tour starting outside the Royal Courts of Justice, showing how dirty money is laundered here in practice – through legal tactics that intimidate scrutiny, and opaque company structures linked to UK jurisdictions.

🌍Today is International Anti-Corruption Day!

Yesterday, the Government published its Anti-Corruption Strategy – timely recognition that corruption is a threat to democracy. We co-sponsored the launch event, where our Chair @philbrickellmp.bsky.social welcomed the UK’s anti-corruption drive.

9/ So the new Anti-Corruption Strategy sets the right ambition - but now we need action to match it.

We look forward to engaging the Government over the coming months and years to work on the next steps and truly make the UK the anti-corruption capital of the world.

Follow for more updates.

PM vows to stop rich and powerful silencing journalists as he sounds AI warning Keir Starmer said his Government will bring in measures to prevent powerful people intimidating journalists away from telling the truth as he said the media is 'the lifeblood of democracy'

8/ This lacks the urgency that the problem demands, considering the Prime Minister himself has described the current situation as ‘intolerable’.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

7/ There are other commitments in the Strategy which are welcome, but in need of improvement.

For example, the Strategy says the Government will “consider the future approach for comprehensively tackling all SLAPPs” (commitment 1.2.5) by 2029.

6/ We welcome the Strategy’s commitment to explore strengthening economic crime enforcement funding.

We campaign for a ringfenced, multi-year Economic Crime Fighting Fund, to use reinvested criminal cash to bolster enforcement agencies like the National Crime Agency and Serious Fraud Office.

The transparency registers that weren’t UK ministers have praised five of the UK’s Overseas Territories for searchable registers revealing who really owns companies registered there. TaxWatch has found that one of these new registers doesn'...

5/ The Strategy aims to “work with Britain’s Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories to enhance corporate transparency”, but we’ve been here before.

Many, many times.

www.taxwatchuk.org/the-transpar...

4/ So this will be a key opportunity for the UK to lead a coalition of the willing on anti-corruption.

But Britain’s credibility in hosting a Countering Illicit Finance Summit will be undermined if some of its own Overseas Territories continue enabling illicit financial flows on a global scale.

3/ The Government announced over the weekend that the UK will hold a Countering Illicit Finance Summit in June 2026.

The APPG has long called for UK global leadership on illicit finance, given the UK’s position as a major financial centre.

2/ The Strategy promises a review of asset ownership in the UK, overseen by the Anti-Corruption Champion.

We have policy recs for greater transparency over who owns what in Britain, including for information about who sits behind secretive trusts.

static1.squarespace.com/static/5e4a7...