Scammers love UK companies. We know that. This nice little house in South London and another house around the corner have been used as the registered office for some 100 Chinese-controlled companies formed over just the past couple of weeks, Andrew Penman, an investigative Mirror journalist, and Companies House investigator Graham Barrow disclosed. The woman living there says that she knows nothing about them. According to Mirror, this is further proof of the “chronic uselessness” of the UK Companies House.
The Land Registry shows that the property freehold is owned by a Wang Quanzhan and Jing Li. Each of the companies registered at the address has a single director living in China, and the company names are a mix of the surname then the first name of the supposed director, so Mengqingle Limited (Companies House) has a director called Qingle Meng, Wangyuhan Limited (Companies House) has a director called Yuhan Wang, and so on.
“I’ve received a lot of letters, I didn’t count them. I’m going to send them back,” she said, holding around a dozen brown envelopes.
According to Andrew Penmans, these companies may have been established for mail orders and internet sales of Chinese-owned mail order firms to garner consumer confidence by appearing to have a registered office here.
Registering a limited company in the UK couldn’t be simpler. It costs just £12, no questions asked. Thus the UK is a favorite place of scammers and crooks. No one checks if you’ve given the correct basic information, like your name or office address. Anyone can register a company using any office address and any names for the directors because Companies House won’t check.
Dark money expert Graham Barrow describes the mass of companies being set up with fake details as “a national scandal of epic proportions.“
