It has taken ICIJ's publication of the "Pandora Papers" to reveal that dictators, hereditary rulers and elected politicians from around the world own swathes of prime London property. We are promised further details of how rich donors to Tory politicians take advantage of anonymity of ownership of property, which should have been ended by now.
Journalists from the Guardian newspaper and BBC's Panorama have trawled through the wealth of documents unearthed by the ICIJ. Both they and those subjects of the investigation who have deigned to comment stress that no laws have been broken. However, that is only because the law is deficient in this area. King Abdullah of Jordan may well have legally bought millions of pounds worth of mews homes in the West End using family wealth, but his subjects might well query why they are in need of international financial support to survive. More serious to my mind are the politicians elected on a "transparency" ticket, including our own Tony Blair, who also shelter in the ambit of anonymity.
This government is, like the Blair administration, fond of gesture politics, making law where there are already remedies under common law if not previous statutes. A prime example is their recent knee-jerk in response to the Insulate Britain demonstrations. They are not so ready to fill a gap in the law whose need has been highlighted not only by campaigners for political transparency but also tenants who have been victimised by faceless entities with addresses in tax shelters.
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