Britain draws ire by delaying tax shelter crackdown

The UK government drew the wrath of transparency groups on Monday by delaying proposed legislation aimed at ending secret company ownership in offshore territories such as Jersey.

Britain has been gradually ramping up its fight against money laundering and various tax avoidance and evasion schemes.

But it has less say in the rules governing the Isle of Man -- a region of 85,000 people in the Irish Sea -- and its fellow crown dependencies of Jersey and Guernsey.

The European Union has threatened to include the tiny territories in its 2019 list of tax havens if they fail to improve their transparency rules.

A cross-party amendment, that had been scheduled for debate in the British parliament on Monday, is aimed at obliging the islands introduce registers disclosing companies' ownership structures.

The law would require the names of parties owning at least 25 percent of any firm registered in the dependencies to be made publicly available by the end of 2020.

But the government on Monday .