SINCE the Panama Papers scandal broke, much has been written about the way offshore companies have allowed anonymous buyers to purchase expensive London properties – in the process, helping to inflate the capital's already overheated housing market.
Today, we reveal that companies in the Central American tax haven at the centre of the scandal have been buying up flats in one of Scotland's most desirable residential areas – Hillhead in Glasgow's west end.
Last weekend, we revealed that 34 companies and at least six large estates are owned by firms in Panama. Now, it transpires that those companies' reach extends also to our cities. In Glasgow alone, six flats in the west end were snapped up by entities in Panama and 100 in the British Virgin Islands.
Why this is worrying? The practice of using a firm based in a secret location is not illegal, but it must be a cause for concern that parts of Scotland can be owned by persons unknown.
In London, such faceless transactions do nothing to help the UK capital’s housing crisis and similar fears must also exist north of the Border. With many young people already struggling to get onto the housing ladder, we in Scotland need to be wary of anything that risks artificially inflating our property market, to the detriment of the economy, and our quality of life.
Two solutions present themselves. The first is that the Scottish Government must consider applying punitive taxes to properties owned offshore.
The second is to dust down the Scottish Green Party idea of restricting future sales of property to companies outside the European Union.
The Government was believed to be mulling over this proposal last year, but it never made it into law.
As governments across the world consider their approach to the Panama Papers scandal, this proposal could be a simple but powerful response by the next devolved administration.
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