Foreigners must be stopped from buying UK homes with “plundered or laundered cash” as part of a “global effort” to defeat corruption, David Cameron is expected to say in a speech later.
Cameron will vow to expose the use of “anonymous shell companies” to buy luxury UK properties, often in London.
Speaking in Singapore, he will say the UK must not become “a safe haven for corrupt money from around the world”.
He will say the international community must tackle the “cancer of corruption”.
Cameron is currently on a four-day tour of South East Asia. Describing corruption as “the enemy of progress”, he will call for a “global effort” to tackle it, saying the world has “looked the other way for too long”.
Cameron’s stance follows comments from the National Crime Agency published at the end of last week, which showed foreign criminals were pushing up house prices in the UK by laundering billions of pounds through the purchase of expensive properties.
Cameron will say properties in the UK, particularly in London, “are being bought by people overseas through anonymous shell companies, some with plundered or laundered cash”.
“There is no place for dirty money in Britain. Indeed, there should no place for dirty money anywhere,” Cameron will add.
More than 100,000 UK property titles are registered to overseas companies, with more than 36,000 properties in London owned by offshore firms.
About £122bn of property in England and Wales is owned by offshore companies.
The government is to publish Land Registry data later this year, setting out which foreign companies own land and property in England and Wales.
Cameron will also consider forcing a foreign company bidding for a government contract to “publicly state who really owns it”.
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