Team Leader: Company Transparency, Sanctions and Wider Economic Crime

This is an exciting opportunity to lead a team delivering far-reaching reforms to tackle economic crime, safeguard our national security, and improve the UK’s business environment. You will lead three distinct strands of work: 

1. Representing DBT interests in cross government work on tackling economic crime, including engagement with private sector stakeholders, principally the finance, legal and accountancy sectors as well as civil society /NGOs;
2. Detailed policy work, principally on (i) transparency of property ownership, including working with Companies House to oversee successful implementation and enforcement of legislation passed last year, (ii) taking forward a public consultation on expanding access to trust information in relation to property ownership, and (iii) implementing an effective regime to ensure that persons or entities subject to UK/international sanctions cannot act as directors of UK companies; and
3. Working with foreign government and international bodies to provide advice and technical assistance to enable them to set up their own beneficial ownership transparency regimes.  

The successful candidate will gain excellent and highly transferable experience in core policy-making skills including working with legal advisors to formulate regulations, and directly supporting Ministers to secure Parliamentary approval for those regulations.  

The team is part of the Company Law and Transparency branch which combines responsibility for core company law, making it easy for people to set up business in the UK, oversight of Companies House, and seeking to tackle opaque business practices that undermine confidence in the UK’s business environment, and which can be used to obscure fraud, money-laundering and other illicit activity.  

These issues attract significant Ministerial, Parliamentary, and public attention in the wake of recent exposés about international money laundering through the UK. Following the invasion of Ukraine, DBT has worked in partnership with the Home Office to introduce the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022, and its follow-up, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, which has just received Royal Assent.  

We in Corporate Law and Governance (CLG) directorate shape how UK businesses are set up, owned, managed and financed. We are a friendly and collegiate group, and we pride ourselves at being at the forefront of change. We want to support our people to succeed in their current roles and to achieve their career potential and we take wellbeing and diversity very seriously. We would therefore welcome applications from people from a range of backgrounds. 

The successful candidate will lead and directly manage two high quality SEOs.

Cross Government economic crime work 

In March 2023, Government published its latest Economic Crime Plan (2023-26), which sets out the UK’s approach to tackling economic crime through three pillars: 

1. Reducing money laundering and recovering more criminal assets;
2. Combatting kleptocracy and driving down sanctions’ evasion; and
3. Cutting fraud. 

Within the first pillar, a key area of activity is to limit the abuse of UK corporate structures. DBT owns actions 1,2 and 3 of the Plan, which will deliver this, through (1) legislation to reform Companies House and limited partnerships, (2) completing the operational implementation of the legislation, and (3) maximising the value of the reforms. Working closely with cross Government and private sector stakeholders, the team directly supports the DD to ensure there is effective collaboration taking place on these actions between public and private sector, and issues about the progress of the actions are efficiently escalated and resolved issues. 

The team also leads on DBT input into other cross Whitehall economic crime initiatives ensuring that our views and contributions are known and reflected in future policy initiatives. You will need to represent BEIS with a range of other partners including the Home Office, HM Treasury, HMRC, National Crime Agency and wider UK intelligence community and stakeholders including the financial services, accountancy, and legal professions. Current initiatives include work by HMT to reform the UK’s Money Laundering Regulations and related work by HMT to reform the regulatory oversight of sectors covered by those regulations.  

Planned future initiatives include preparation of the next “National Risk Assessment” (a comprehensive assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing risk in the UK), this is an HMT/HO lead next due in 2024, and preparation for the next review of the UK’s AML and TF regime by the Financial Action Task Force The review is likely in 2026, but preparatory work is likely to get under way next year. Another HMT/HO lead.  

Register of Overseas Entities policy work 

You will join us at a time of close scrutiny over implementation of property transparency measures introduced the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 that target money laundering through UK property by revealing who are the real owners of offshore companies owning UK property. Companies House have started to collect information, but you will be responsible for developing vital details of the policy so it can be further operationalised and underpinned by regulations. Further regulation is planned for 2024. Meanwhile you will work with Companies House and HM Land Registry to ensure that the information being submitted is high quality and is being effectively scrutinised. In addition, working jointly with HMT and DLUHC, you will take forward a sensitive consultation on improving access to information about ownership and control of trusts that own UK property (arrangements where ownership of property is transferred to another person or entity that must keep it and use it in line with the previous owner’s instructions – typically for the benefit of a third party or “beneficiary”).  

International Technical Assistance work 

The UK was a pioneer in building and implementing registries of data on the ultimate owners and controllers of companies. The Register of property-owning Overseas Entities is a world first. We have funding to support a small programme of outreach to other countries and international organisations to support their work to develop comprehensive and accurate data on company beneficial owners. The G6 and G7 lead this programme and supports the DD who is directly accountable to HMT for the expenditure. The work varies across presentations and workshops that may be delivered in person or virtually and longer-term partnership working delivered over a period of time or intensive multi-day visits to the partner country. We are often supported by Companies House colleagues on technical / implementation issues. 

Current engagement plans include engagement with the EU Commission, EU Parliamentarians around a presentation in Brussels, an international business registry convention in Malta, meeting a visiting Turkish delegation and finalising a longer-term programme of work with the UAE.

Essential Criteria 

(1) Strong written and verbal communication skills. Your drafting must be clear, concise and impactful to both internal (e.g. Ministerial submissions) and external (e.g. PQs, speeches) audiences. Company and partnership law is technical and many of our reforms are nuanced, so you must be able to grasp and explain complex subject matter effectively to different audiences.

(2) Excellent stakeholder management skills, and an open and collaborative approach to solving problems. We work with a number of other bodies to deliver our reforms, and they sometimes have competing priorities -so you will need to show that you can navigate tensions and forge consensus. 

(3) Solid evidence of your ability to think critically. You will be expected to lead a number of work strands independently, requiring you to consider a range of evidence and make sound judgements on the most effective way to proceed when decisions need to be made.  

(4) A clear and consistent understanding of how work that you have led fits in, and has contributed to, a broader programme of work. The work that you will be responsible for in this team will be linked to the work of others in sometimes complex ways. You will need to fully take account of these interactions to be successful.

Desirable Criteria  

Existing subject matter knowledge is not essential but any understanding of business regulation, company law or economic crime would certainly be beneficial. 

The successful candidate should be prepared to undergo clearance to DV level once into the role, assuming they do not already have this level of clearance.

We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Making Effective Decisions
• Working Together
• Communicating and Influencing

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%

We recognise the challenges that people with (multiple) protected characteristics may experience on the job market and in their career progression. We are fully committed to being an inclusive employer and ensuring equal opportunities. We are keen to make our workforce as diverse as possible, and we hope to attract applications from underrepresented groups, including ethnic minorities, people with a disability, and people with gender diverse identities.

Please refer to the attached candidate pack for further information on our benefits.

Job contact :

• Name : Stephen Webster
• Email : Stephen.Webster@businessandtrade.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : dbtrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk