Open Government Partnership Global Summit

Publicly accessible information on beneficial ownership is one of the most important developments in the open government agenda to date. Understanding who controls or benefits from companies is a step change in corporate transparency and fundamental to the fight against corruption. Hundreds of billions of dollars are lost to corruption in public procurement every year. This can lead to lower quality infrastructure and services, wasted tax money and decreased trust in government. Corporate vehicles, such as companies, trusts, foundations and partnerships
play a legitimate and important role in our global economy. But they can also be used to disguise the real owners of companies, making it hard for citizens and governments to “follow the money.” Transparency, open data and access to information - key tenets of open government - are essential to tackling this issue, and beneficial ownership registries can help drive a transparency revolution.