Formations House (now The London Office) is a "company mill" which registered and operated companies for clients included organized crime groups, state-owned oil companies, and fraudulent banks. The company was founded in 2001 and registered at 29 Harley Street and promised to let clients run businesses "in Central London at a prestigious Harley Street business address". The company formed more than 450,000 corporate entities in Britain, Gambia, Hong Kong, the Seychelles, the British Virgin Islands, Ireland, the US state of Delaware, Panama, Gibraltar, Jersey, the Isle of Man, Belize and Mauritius.

#29 Leaks

In December 2019,

Distributed Denial of Secrets Distributed Denial of Secrets, abbreviated DDoSecrets, is a nonprofit whistleblower site founded in 2018 for news leaks. The site is a frequent source for other news outlets and has worked on investigations including Cyprus Confidential with o ...

(DDoSecrets) published "#29 Leaks" in partnership with the

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is a global network of Investigative journalism, investigative journalists. It was founded in 2006 and specializes in organized crime and corruption. It publishes its stories through ...

and more than 20 outlets in 18 countries. The 450 gigabyte leak included emails, documents, faxes, and recordings of phone calls. Investigations revealed the firm ran a web of companies registered in Hong Kong, Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands and Pakistan, helped clients avoid anti-money laundering rules and had created banks in

The Gambia The Gambia, officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. Geographically, The Gambia is the List of African countries by area, smallest country in continental Africa; it is surrounded by Senegal on all sides except for ...

in an attempt to create a tax haven. According to ''The Times'', there was no evidence that Formations House did anything illegal but their investigation highlighted worrying vulnerabilities in the UK's defences against money laundering". The release was compared to both the

Panama Papers The Panama Papers () are 11.5 million leaked documents (or 2.6 terabytes of data) published beginning April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. These document ...

and the

Paradise Papers The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, from the newspaper'' Süddeutsche Z ...

. Belgian tax authorities initiated an investigation based on data from this leak and from the Cayman National Bank and Trust leak published by DDoSecrets the prior month. Politicians in Sweden and the UK, including anti-corruption chief

John Penrose John David Penrose (born 22 June 1964) is a British politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Weston-super-Mare from 2005 until 2024. A member of the Conservative Party, he was the United Kingdom Anti-Corruption Champion at th ...

said the leak showed the need for reforms on company creation and registration.

References

{{Reflist

External links

#29LEAKS: Inside a London Company Mill
-

OCCRP The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is a global network of investigative journalists. It was founded in 2006 and specializes in organized crime and corruption. It publishes its stories through local media and in Englis ...

Offshore in central London: the curious case of 29 Harley Street
-

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

2019 in the United Kingdom British companies established in 2001 Distributed Denial of Secrets Financial scandals Money laundering News leaks Registrars of companies Tax avoidance in the United Kingdom

#29 Leaks

See also

References

External links