
Search for $1B Stolen from Moldova Leads to Ex-Council Flat in Scotland - nols
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34445201
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michaelt

      Prime Minister David Cameron told a conference in
      Singapore in July: "We are one of the most open and
      welcoming economies anywhere in the world and I want
      Britain to be that country. But I want to ensure that all
      this money is clean money. There is no place for dirty
      money in Britain."
    

Based on this and other reports, it sounds like Cameron has a lot of work to
do.

With motoring offences in the UK, if a car is fined the owner identifies the
driver so the driver can be fined - and if the owner claims they "don't know
who was driving", the owner gets the fine. So you can't dodge a fine or get a
lesser fine by "forgetting".

We should apply the same logic to white collar crimes. If lawyers or corporate
service providers are setting up companies with fake details, acting as
directors then claiming they "don't know who controls the company", whatever
punishments are due to the company's owners should transfer to whoever touched
it last.

~~~
arethuza
"There is no place for dirty money in Britain."

Quite right - that's what the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are for.

~~~
louthy
And the City of London Corporation [1][2][3]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation)

[2]
[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corpora...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-
london-city-medieval)

[3] [http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-
corporati...](http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporation-
city)

------
ZoFreX
If you're interested in this sort of thing I can highly recommend a
subscription to Private Eye magazine, which has been investigating dodgy shell
companies and who they are really connected to for years.

(If you've never heard of Private Eye, it combines irreverent humour and hard-
hitting investigative journalism, and has been the first to break many of the
biggest stories in the British press)

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shubb
I'm a little concerned to see company registration services demonized. I used
one for my own company.

Like a domain registration they also usually provide anonymity by declaring
themselves as your office address. That's legitimate too as many contractors
don't have an office and don't want thier home address published publicly on
the uk companies register. That isn't a fraud.

The BBC makes much of the weird ownership structure, but it is not that crazy.
The structure described, 2 companies that basically represent people owning a
company that basically does work is a tax efficiency. If the co owners own it
directly and take thier money as pay not dividend, they pay more tax. If they
take it as dividend not pay, it is split by ownership not hours worked. Better
for both directors to be companies that charge the main company per hour for
work done and then extract the dividend from those personal company
seperately. I wouldn't do it as it has some problems like disguised employment
but if compliant it is a tax efficiency not an evasion, and not a criminal
activity.

I dunno, it's like saying a secure document destruction company is suspicious.
It's just a company that provides a service that most users need to do normal
productive business.

~~~
cpncrunch
I think you've misunderstood. An IT contractor is generally the director of
their company, and there aren't generally any nominee directors. In this case
the two people providing the company registration services are actually
nominee directors of the company (the same company that received the billion
dollar stolen wire transfer!)

~~~
shubb
Literally the same? Well shit they are probably criminals then

~~~
cpncrunch
Yes, read the article.

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amitparikh
In Delaware, 1209 North Orange Street is the address of over 200,000
businesses including Silicon Valley giants like Google and Apple.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_Trust_Center_(CT_C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_Trust_Center_\(CT_Corporation\))

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-
thri...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-thrives-as-a-
corporate-tax-haven.html)

------
scintill76
> But they have never been to the Seychelles, and official Seychelles ink
> stamps used to register Fortuna United at Companies House in the UK were not
> sent from the islands.

> Zirnelyte says suitable stamps can be bought on the online auction site
> eBay.

How is a stamp from eBay an "official Seychelles stamp"? Does it just mean the
stamps officially used by the Seychellois shell companies to "sign" things,
rather than by the government of Seychelles? The way it was said sounds very
fraudulent to me (even for a shell company mill), as if they forged the
Seychelles registration docs. The image shown appears to be two bland stamps
with the same design, each with a company name and a shared address in
Seychelles (and from Googling the address, it looks like that's another
company registration agent.)

~~~
plextoria
The stamps in questions are corporate stamps, not government's:
[http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/2390/production...](http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/2390/production/_85940190_scan.jpg)
You can have those made anywhere.

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ruxkor
Here is a short video introduction, if you were not aware of the scheme:
[https://youtu.be/KxsylnDO15w](https://youtu.be/KxsylnDO15w)

~~~
downandout
So the $1 billion is actually just a small portion...this video says the total
is $20 billion. Amazing.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Scottish companies law is devolved. I should hope the Scottish Parliament
could tighten up the rules on SLPs.

Interestingly "money laundering" is reserved, though.

~~~
arethuza
Actual creation of company law legislation still seems to mainly be done at
Westminster but company registrations are done separately in Scotland and
there appear to be some differences like these SLPs:

[http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Justice/law/damages/company](http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Justice/law/damages/company)

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zaroth
In search for a cool pilfered billion, they haven't even made it past the
first thin veil of LLPs?

What does it even mean to say that Fortuna Limited "has the rights to the
billion dollars which disappeared last year"?

~~~
arethuza
It says that Fortuna is "owed" that money, presumably in exchange for some
goods or services, that would be an interesting invoice to see!

------
arethuza
Interesting that a "Scottish Limited Partnership" doesn't appear to be the
same thing as a Scottish LLP:

[http://www.brodies.com/node/1614](http://www.brodies.com/node/1614)

