In response to growing concerns surrounding transparency, particularly in London, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said in November that he would push for a law in 2014 requiring closely held companies to disclose their “ultimate beneficial owners” in a public database.
Moving Money
“Today, you can create anonymous shell companies with multiple levels of complexity and start moving money freely across international boundaries in an afternoon,” says Robert Palmer, a senior policy analyst at Global Witness, a London- based anti-corruption organization. “But it can take years to follow the money backwards and find out who owns it.”
For all of their efforts, BTA’s hunters will probably recover only $2 billion to $3 billion, Prosyankin says. Ablyazov invested the bank’s capital in property at the peak of the global real estate boom in 2007 and 2008, and many of those developments are still just holes in the ground.
“Even if we are successful in getting a hold of the assets, they may be worth only a fraction of the money he paid in 2008,” Prosyankin says.
After a five-year safari across three continents, BTA’s asset hunters are confronting a reality that isn’t likely to change unless the world’s financial regulations are overhauled: It’s easier to make $6 billion disappear than it is to find it.