Thousands of properties worth more than £16bn bought with suspicious wealth

An investigation by Transparency International has uncovered hundreds of new build properties and development sites linked to suspicious wealth.

Since 2016, Transparency International has identified over 2,000 properties worth over £12 billion bought with suspicious wealth. 

Its new report, Concerning Developments, finds that more than a third of them – 708 properties worth £2.2 billion – are new build homes or development sites. They are spread across more than 150 locations, from London and the South East to Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool, and involve more than 85 developers. Because its data only captures cases it can see, Transparency International says the real figure is almost certainly higher.

UK companies and individuals bought most of these assets by volume (617) and value (£1.2 billion). Offshore entities held the rest, of which those incorporated in Jersey, the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Guernsey, and the Isle of Man owned 72 properties worth £813 million. Roughly speaking, UK companies acquired lower-value apartments whereas offshore companies purchased those at the higher end of the market. 

Transparency International says new builds are especially attractive as many new homes are sold 'off-plan' before they are finished, which suits people looking to hide money. They can buy several flats at once, spreading their funds across smaller purchases that attract less attention. They can sell a flat on before it is completed, which means their name never appears on the public land register. And because developers often rely on early sales to pay for construction, there is little appetite for awkward questions.

Citing one example, in 2021, two executives linked to the Prince Group bought 27 flats in two of London’s best-known new developments, Embassy Gardens in Battersea and Centre Point in the West End. The Prince Group, a Cambodian business empire, has since been sanctioned by the UK and US over human trafficking, fraud and corruption. Warning signs about the group were already public when the flats were bought, but the sales went through anyway. Today all 27 are frozen by UK authorities.

Transparency International is now calling on the government to regulate developers for money laundering purposes, stating that it should use its forthcoming consultation on broadening the scope of the money laundering regulations to take a risk-based approach to supervising property developers.

Phil Cotter, CEO, SmartSearch, commented: “The Transparency International report rightly focused attention on money laundering through new build property, where significant sums move through complex corporate and overseas ownership structures. Developers and their intermediaries can be outside the AML regime depending on the specific activity, which creates perimeter questions that need to be answered. Our 2026 Compliance Reality Check, based on 1,000 senior decision-makers across UK regulated sectors, found that compliance leaders in the property sector are less likely than those in accounting, finance or legal to describe anti-financial crime regulations in their industry as effective. The report also found that 95% of property firms face at least one major compliance challenge, and 54% struggle to verify beneficial ownership in complex corporate structures, and 89% would sever a commercial relationship after a single compliance breach. The intent to do the right thing is there. The gap sits in the tools and the data available to act on that intent.
 
“The reforms under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act are already helping. Companies House has removed 151,000 registered office addresses, verified over 3.8 million people under the identity regime, and suspended 74 Authorised Corporate Service Providers in the last twelve months. The shell company route is harder to use than it was a year ago. The next step is making verification accessible to the people who actually need it: estate agents taking on a new developer, and conveyancers acting on an off-plan sale. Verified identity and compliance information should be shareable across the property journey, as I have said before. Responsibility must stay with the regulated entity. Better data. Better checks. Applied where the risk warrants it.”