By admin 
Home Secretary Dan Jarvis said in a written response to a question from fellow Labor MP Phil Brickell, published just before Christmas, that the Government continues to view public access to registers as “a crucial tool in tackling illegal financing’. And he expected to discuss the issue with Guernsey politicians in 2025, he said.
‘The Department of Home Affairs continues to work with the Crown Dependencies to help improve the transparency of their beneficial ownership and welcomes the commitments made by the Crown Dependencies to greater business transparency; the Crown Dependencies are working to implement legitimate interest access to their records, including access for the media and civil society,” Mr Jarvis said.
‘However, this government is committed to tackling illegal financing and expects that this will be an intermediate step towards public registers.
“I look forward to meeting with the Crown Dependencies in 2025 to discuss this ongoing agenda.”
The Crown Dependencies’ relationship with Westminster is through the Ministry of Justice, but the Home Office is in charge of the illicit financial contacts.
Mr Jarvis noted that the islands share data from their beneficial ownership registers with UK law enforcement agencies.
A year ago, Guernsey, along with Jersey and the Isle of Man, agreed to do more to improve access to information from beneficial ownership registers to meet the UK’s interim progress plans.
The agreement aimed to work towards defining access for “legitimate interests” by the fourth quarter of 2024, in line with international obligations. Once an agreement is reached, implementation should follow within ‘a reasonable time frame’.
Since then, there have been no public announcements about the progress made.