138,000 residential and commercial properties in England and Wales are owned by offshore companies, with holdings in London alone worth a combined £55bn. 42,543 are in London, and concentrated in the most expensive areas. In the City of Westminster, which includes the central London areas of Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Belgravia, there are 9,066 offshore-owned residential properties, and a further 5,453 in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea,
Rex McKenzie, the lead researcher and a lecturer at Kingston University, found, “The billionaires and millionaires who use offshore services to buy houses are part of a transnational wealth elite that includes the world’s oligarchs, super-rich, kleptocrats, tax dodgers and criminals.”
No comments:
Post a Comment