Frontline Facilitators: How Secretive UK Partnerships Supply Wartime Russia

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

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  Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, UK Limited Partnerships (LPs) have been named as trade intermediaries in thousands of records detailing imports into the belligerent state.

  However, experts have long argued these corporate vehicles — which are easy to set up and can be used to obscure ownership under the benefit of English common law — encourage unchecked illicit activity on global financial markets.Bellingcat’s analysis of publicly available import and export records has revealed that:

  The EU and its international partners list a number of HS codes which they considers “High Priority”, pertaining to items “found on the battlefield in Ukraine or critical to the development, production or use of those Russian military systems”.

  Bellingcat showed the details of the shipments to L. Burke Files, an independent financial investigator expert in illicit finance and who has studied UK and Scottish LPs.

  SLPs have legitimate business applications, but their opaque ownership, lack of filing requirements and tax transparency have been utilized in a litany of major money laundromats and a wide variety of illicit activity worldwide, dating back to at least 2014.

  Last year, the Government said it is “aware of reports that some limited partnerships have been abused… and intends to crack down on their misuse.”New legislation, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, received Royal Assent on October 26, introducing regulations to LPs such as the need for partners to provide additional identifying information.

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  The original article contains 2,136 words, the summary contains 238 words. Saved 89%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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