Awarding contracts to unusual companies, without advertising, transparency or competition now appears to have been adopted as the norm. While it is hard to show that any individual deal is corrupt, the framework under which this money is dispensed invites the perception. The looters rely on secrecy regimes to process and hide their stolen money. By giving false identities, company owners in the UK can engage in the industrial processing of dirty money with no fear of getting caught. Even when the UK’s company registration system was revealed as instrumental to the world’s biggest known money-laundering scheme, the Danske Bank scandal, the government turned a blind eye.

Source: The Guardian September 10, 2020 09:00 UTC