Dirty Property Money - UK almost world’s worst for money laundering

Identity verification service Credas claims the UK sits second in the list of global money laundering hotspots.

The amount laundered - much of it through property, mostly in London - is an estimated £88 billion annually.

It’s estimated that around the world, the total sum of money laundered on an annual basis equates to as much as 3.0 per cent of global GDP.

For countries in the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development - and that includes the UK - the sum laundered is an estimated 1.9 of GDP on average.

However the UK figure is 4.3 per cent.

Worse still, the research by Credas shows that when quantifying the GDP, the UK is the second worst in the world with £88 billion annually.

Just one other OECD nation sits above the UK, the United States.

France (£54.5 billion), Germany (£51.3 billion), and Canada (£25.6 billion) make up the top five.

In contrast, Iceland sits at the bottom of the OECD rankings, with just £370m in value followed by Estonia (£703.4m) and Latvia (£750m).

Credas chief executive Tim Barnett says: “The practice of money laundering is as old as the hills and it’s one area of criminal activity that is incredibly tricky to eradicate as it can be done in such a vast and varied number of ways. 

“It’s also a practice that continues to evolve with the times and in more recent years we’ve seen criminals utilise online banking, cryptocurrencies and, most recently, so-called Non-Fungible Token marketplaces, in order to wash dirty cash.”