> How many financial companies in the world are based there?
Many, for sure. Plenty more are headquartered in Canary Wharf, which is not in the City but in Tower Hamlets. These include Barclays, HSBC and Citigroup.
That's one way to put it. Another way to put it is "most". The City has the largest number of financial firms, the largest share of office space, and the largest share of trading volume and assets under management. It's home to the Bank of England and the London Stock Exchange, and will be home to HSBC when it finishes its move there from Canary Wharf.
Those firms have been accused--indirectly--of money laundering. If they're engaged in that vice, it's plausible to me they would add the additional vice of protecting it from scrutiny. I.e. engaging in "secrecy." It need not collude with the government to do so, but if it did it would hardly be the first time business and government colluded under a veil of secrecy.
As for what the actual City of London Corporation runs, since you didn't answer the question, I'll answer it for you. In addition to collecting bins and operating one school, it also runs a police department.
The firms you mention have certainly colluded with the government in Westminster, which is the one that regulates financial services. The City of London Corporation is merely a local authority (albeit a quirky one), and banks don't really need its cooperation in order to launder money. (HSBC did a fine job of it from Canary Wharf, for example.)
>it also runs a police department.
As do many other regions of the country. There's nothing surprising or sinister about this. There isn't any connection between this administrative fact and money laundering.
I'm not saying there's anything necessarily sinister or surprising about its police department. I'm just trying to be more complete. If we say the City just collects bins and runs one school, well that's not really giving the full picture, now is it?
Beyond that, consider this:
-The City has one of highest concentrations of global finance power in the world, if not the highest.
-That global finance power--global banking and commerce--has been accused of illicit activity, largely money laundering.
-If they do engage in that illicit activity, they probably collude with whatever governments they need to to advance their interests. It only makes sense.
-And, they probably would cloak these activities under a veil of secrecy. That also only makes sense.
Little if any of this is in dispute. What seems to be in dispute is the answer to these related questions:
Money laundering can happen anywhere, in Canary Wharf, in the Channel Islands, hell in New York and Delaware. But, is there something unique about the square mile? If so, what is it? Whatever conditions create a money laundering opportunity, are those conditions enhanced by what's unique about the City? And if it's not the Corporation, then what is it? If there's a high degree of money laundering there to go along with its high concentration of global finance power, then why is that? Because there hasn't been equivalent such accusations against New York and Delaware. The square mile has been called out as playing an outsized role in corruption. If that's true--supposing for the sake of argument it is--if that's true, then why? Is it just coincidence? Global finance and the vices it's indulged in had to land somewhere, and the City was as good a place as any?
There's always this misconception that it's some sort of lawless wild west. If it was, I assure you every company in the world would be based there!