The UK government has been accused of caving-in to pressure from the British Virgin Islands by allowing it to limit access to a register of company share ownership to only those deemed to have a legitimate interest.
The restriction, to be discussed at talks starting on Tuesday between Foreign Office ministers and leaders of the British overseas territories (BOTs) in London, is in defiance of legislation passed by the UK government as long ago as 2008 that would make the register available to all.
Public registers of beneficial share ownership have long been seen as the best means to expose corruption and tax evasion in overseas territories.
The backsliding by the BOTs has led an all-party group of MPs to urge ministers to recognise that the talks this week represent “the last chance” to clamp down on embarrassing corruption in the UK’s own back yard before the Foreign Office holds a high-profile international anti-corruption conference next year.
The conference was announced by the previous foreign secretary, David Lammy.
A letter coordinated by the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax, Phil Brickell, urges ministers to ensure certain jurisdictions, including the BVI and Cayman Islands, introduce long-promised transparency measures.
It warns that this week’s joint ministerial council gathering “represents the last chance to put the [BOTs’] house in order before next year’s much-anticipated Global Illicit Finance Summit, a flagship event central to the government’s vision of making the UK ‘the anti-corruption capital of the world’”.
Brickell said: “This has gone on for long enough. Time and time again promises have been broken and Britain’s reputation as a clean and fair place to do business has been dragged through the mud.
“Those overseas territories which continue to block and frustrate the will of parliament are letting the rest of the British family down, including those jurisdictions which have already acted in good faith and opened up their books.”
The government’s anti-corruption champion Margaret Hodge visited the BVI in September and said she hoped the joint ministerial council would be the occasion where an agreement on registers was reached. Lady Hodge was instrumental in passing the original laws requiring all BOTs to make registers publicly available.
At the last council meeting in 2024, all BOTs that had not already done so agreed to design and implement open corporate registers by June 2025. The UK originally set a deadline of December 2023 for the preparation of public registers, giving them more than five years since the original legislation was passed.
In defining those with a legitimate interest, the BVI includes anyone seeking to investigate, prevent or detect money laundering, terrorist financing or proliferation financing, but it also states the registrar can deny access if it believes it is in the public interest of the BVI to do so. The relevant company would have to be notified if a request was being made.
The BVI is thought to have 12 companies registered for every individual BVI citizen. The Financial Action Task Force grey-listed the BVI in June 2025, citing its lack of transparency surrounding beneficial ownership.
Transparency International said the BVI rules meant “legitimate interest users will only see a subset of data, rather than what is being submitted to the register. This means users will most likely end up seeing the name of nominee shareholders or trustees holding the company on behalf of a hidden beneficiary.”
