The global shift towards transparency and accountability in corporate ownership and control.
Source: https://www.openownership.org/en/
Seventy percent of grand corruption cases from recent decades involve anonymously owned companies, and the majority featured transnational structures. Time and again illicit financial flows (IFFs)– the proceeds of corruption and other financial crimes– are moved worldwide using anonymously owned companies. This challenge requires a transnational solution where a range of stakeholders have access to standardised data from across the world that can be easily linked to better prevent, detect, and combat systemic corruption.
Global progress on beneficial ownership transparency Beneficial ownership transparency (BOT) brings to light who owns, controls, and benefits from companies and other corporate vehicles (beneficial owners). Beneficial ownership (BO) information is used to investigate corruption and “follow the money”. This data is helping to reduce corruption risks and deliver real-life impacts to prevent and combat corruption, especially when it is structured and can be connected with other BO information and datasets from across the world, and easily exchanged– in other words, when BO data is interoperable. Recognising the power of BOT, over 60 countries now have live BO registers, and at least 20 more countries are working towards launching one. The world is set to generate more BO data than ever before. This presents exciting opportunities as well as practical challenges, namely: How to ensure BO data is used to its fullest potential to prevent and combat transnational corruption?
