Beneficial Ownership Transparency: A Roadmap for Civil Society & Non-Governmental Actors
Cross-border flows of dark money are the greatest corruption challenge of our time. Secretive entity ownership structures and shell companies enable kleptocrats and criminals to steal and hide public assets, which are then weaponized to weaken democratic norms. To combat transnational corruption, a country can require companies operating within its borders to disclose the real people who own them. This concept is known as beneficial ownership transparency (BOT), which enables law enforcement authorities and civil watchdogs to monitor, expose, and seize ill-gotten gains.
To support countries on the road to BOT, IRI developed a toolkit on Beneficial Ownership Transparency: A Roadmap for Civic Activists and Non-Governmental Actors, which outlines and describes key steps needed from advocacy to design to implementation. The Roadmap includes case studies on Albania, Malaysia, and Mexico that explore the conditions that led to advances in BOT in each country and outlines lessons for other countries, regardless of where they are at on the route to BOT. The Roadmap is intended for use by a wide range of actors working to promote greater transparency and counter corruption, including civil society activists, political actors, private businesses, trade unions, journalists, and academics.
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