Estate agents ‘must raise alarm if wealthy foreigners seek to buy expensive homes in London with cash'

Estate agents have been warned on raising the alarm 'over dirty money' in London
PA Wire/PA Images

Security minister Ben Wallace today launched a withering attack on “sharp-suited” lawyers, accountants and other professionals “littering our streets with dirty money”.

He also warned estate agents that they must raise the alarm if wealthy foreigners seek to buy expensive homes in London with cash.

Mr Wallace said the National Crime Agency was stepping up the number of “targeted cases” against wealthy individuals from Russia — after the Salisbury Novichok attack — and other countries.

Britain wanted to send a message to dodgy tycoons that it was cracking down on the laundering of dirty money in London.

Security Minister Ben Wallace announced a crack down on the laundering of dirty money in London
PA Archive/PA Images

“But it is also about going after facilitators, those who allow those crooks to enjoy their money in London,” Mr Wallace told MPs.

“We must ensure that we deal with them all, not just the far-distant crime baron, but the smart, perhaps sharp-suited individuals who think they are just helping and not really engaged, but who in fact are absolutely corrupting our system, littering our streets with dirty money.”

Mr Wallace, who is also minister for economic crime, said that in some cases by the time illicitly-gained fortunes reached London the money had been “cleaned” in other countries.

He added: “People have bought houses with cash, and somehow some estate agents have not thought that that is remotely suspicious. There is an obligation, a legal obligation, on them to report these issues.

“Funnily enough, when we follow up on those cash purchases, they are, more often than not, a dodgy purchase.”

Under the Government’s Suspicious Activity Reports regime, professionals have a duty to tell the authorities as soon as they “know” or “suspect” that a person is engaged in money laundering.

In a debate on the Wiltshire poisonings in the Commons yesterday, Mr Wallace also said that a series of measures were introduced in the Criminal Finances Act 2017, including asset-freezing orders and unexplained wealth orders.

He was speaking a week after Scotland Yard identified two men, using the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, as suspects in the attempted murder of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

The head of Russian channel RT said she spent yesterday evening with the suspects and a report was “coming soon”.

Margarita Simonyan said the pair contacted her because they “trust” her, adding: “The interview was in Russian. Now it is being translated to English.”

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