Ministers face claims they have allowed the ruling elite of Kazakhstan to secretly invest vast chunks of the country’s wealth in the London property market after failing to introduce promised new transparency laws.
Former prime minister David Cameron pledged at an anti-corruption summit in London in 2016 that the UK would end the secret offshore ownership of property. More than five years later, a proposed register of foreign owners of UK property has still not been introduced.
The uprisings in Kazakhstan last week reflected widespread anger at former president Nursultan Nazarbayev’s three decades of rule and the vast fortunes amassed by a privileged few.
Property worth hundreds of millions of pounds in London and southern England has already been identified as bought by Kazakhstan’s wealthy elite in the past two decades. The government is now under pressure to fast-track new laws to introduce the register pledged by Cameron.
David Lammy, shadow foreign secretary, said: “The government has abjectly failed to get to grips with the UK’s role in money laundering, corruption…
