Britain is poised to slap new sanctions on powerful Russians today as a legal crackdown goes through its final stages in Parliament.
After years of delays, the Economic Crime Bill was rushed through in just a week and cleared the House of Lords very late last night.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has claimed it will streamline the sanctions process, lowering legal barriers for the UK to target Putin cronies and making it easier to hit those sanctioned by the US and EU.
A Whitehall source said the government was planning to unveil new sanctions going “a lot harder and a lot further” if the Bill received Royal Assent - with Ms Truss preparing to enact them on Tuesday.
But there was a last-minute row as peers warned “huge gaps” in the law could be exploited by corrupt elites.
And MP and former spending watchdog Margaret Hodge previously warned the Mirror: “This is not an Economic Crime Bill. It’s simply a transparency issue around properties. They’re trying to dress it up as something it’s not.”
The law will introduce a “public register of beneficial owners of overseas entities owning land in the UK”, held by Companies House.
This is after years of complaints that dirty money is plunged into London property through shadowy offshore nominees.
Tory ministers set the time period for declaring ownership at six months, which Labour said would be long enough to sell homes off.
Ministers brought forward last-minute compromises to ensure anyone who sells up from now - trying to get round the six-month limit - would still be named.
But they refused Labour’s plea to cut the time limit to 28 days. And a midnight compromise bid to cut the time to three months was eventually withdrawn by Labour, after ministers compromised in other areas.
Lib Dem Lord Fox said there was a “chorus of disapproval” for the six-month transition period.
Meanwhile ministers U-turned and axed a special exemption to declaring ownership of property - if a Tory minister decides it is “in the interests of the economic wellbeing of the UK.”
Tory ministers conceded on a Lib Dem-Labour amendment that would scrub out the exemption.
But critics have also raised concerns that oligarchs could hide their wealth by putting it in a relative’s name, or blocking transparency by having it owned by a “nominee” in an overseas territory.
And critics had called for stronger enforcement.
Tory minister Lord Callanan insisted: “We are leading on this and I completely accept that we may not have everything perfect."
He insisted only a tiny minority of property held by overseas entities would have links to corruption.
But he admitted there might be “potential loopholes” that are found out later. Labour frontbencher Lord Coaker said: “The Government have failed to act. It is only in the face of this emergency that they have done so."
So far the UK has sanctioned 18 Russian oligarchs over Putin’s war in Ukraine, and sanctions against 386 Russian lawmakers were finally brought after delays on Friday.
Ministers had faced criticism for not bringing the measures sooner.
