UK’s 14 remaining overseas territories risk becoming money laundering centres as a result of the shortage in qualified investigators to police their financial systems, the Commons public accounts committee warned yesterday.

The MPs singled out the Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat and Anguilla, in the Caribbean, as most at risk from questionable financial practices because of poor quality regulatory standards, the Guardian reports.

‘Territories' financial services lack the investigative capacity to scrutinise suspected money laundering activity fully and governors have not used their reserve powers to rectify this. In such a sensitive aspect of the global financial system it is complacent to allow territories for which the UK is responsible entirely to manage the risk themselves,’ the MPs warned.

Their report shows the Turks and Caicos Islands, where 700 people are employed in financial services, only have five experts qualified enough to investigate suspect practices.

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