One of Scotland’s biggest law firms has pulled out of a deal under which it hosted shell companies for anonymous Italians, Brazilians and Russians.
Burness Paull has been under intense scrutiny since The Herald earlier this year revealed that a Scottish limited partnership or SLP based at its Glasgow office was allegedly used to bribe the president of Peru.
The blue chip legal giant allowed company formation agents to set up SLPs - a now notorious kind of business dubbed “Britain’s home-grown secrecy vehicle” - at its prestigious addresses.
Now, just as the UK Government prepares to announce reforms of SLPs, Burness Paull has confirmed that it will no longer host such entities for third parties.
READ MORE: Burness Paull linked to hundreds of secretive firms
Its decision came amid growing concerns that Scotland’s secretly owned companies – many registered at respectable white collar firms – were tarnishing the nation’s image in the same way as anonymous bank accounts did for Switzerland.
Burness Paull and other law firms have a lucrative and legitimate business creating and hosting SLPs as vehicles for funds management for everything from shares to real estate. This is unchanged by their no longer providing a mailbox service.
A spokesman said: “Burness Paull no longer provides accommodation services to partnerships through a third party agency. We continue however to provide accommodation services in respect of fund clients of the firm as part of our overall service.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here