LONDON (AA) – British Premier David Cameron on Thursday hailed a summit on tackling global corruption as “the biggest demonstration of political will” in many years.
Eleven heads of state and government and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry were among more than 40 countries represented at the summit.
Britain announced during the one-day event that any foreign company wanting to buy property or bid for government contracts would now have to join a public register that reveals their true owners.
The participating countries agreed to establish similar registers, but not all pledged to make them public.
The leaders also agreed to set up a new body, the Global Forum for Asset Recovery, which will bring together governments and agencies around the world to recover stolen assets.
In his closing remarks, Cameron described corruption as a “cancer” and “one of the greatest enemies of progress in our time.”
He continued: “I say again, if we want to beat poverty, if we want to beat extremism and narrow the gap between the richest countries in the world and the poorest countries in the world, we have to tackle corruption.”
Transparency International, a non-profit body that campaigns on anti-corruption issues, said Thursday’s summit was “in the main impressive.”
Executive Director Robert Barrington welcomed the announcements on property ownership and new rules for bidding for public procurement contracts.
But he criticized Britain for failing to including its own overseas territories in some of the new rules.
He said: “This was a missed opportunity to lay out a plan for how the overseas territories and crown dependencies will be required to create public registers of beneficial ownership. This secrecy in the U.K.’s tax havens remains its weak spot in any discussion on corruption.”
