Financial Transparency Coalition

Recognizing the relationship between anonymous shell corporations and stolen assets, the World Bank released a collection of case studies entitled “The Grand Corruption Cases Database Project” last week. Part of a larger anti-corruption report The Puppet Masters: How the Corrupt Use Legal Structures to Hide Stolen Assets and What to Do About It, the global collection has made 150 beneficial ownership case studies available online. Thus, users can compare instances of shell corporations between countries and see the state of individual cases and appeals.

The Open Government Partnership – 55 countries which all claim to want to be more transparent, effective and accountable – recently met in Brazil. Increasing corporate accountability is one of their five ‘grand challenges’. However new research by the information provision group OpenCorporates highlight the scale of the challenge: governments are not doing very well on making even the most basic of company details available, let alone the more detailed ownership information that’s actually required to prevent corrupt politicians, terrorists and arms traffickers from moving dirty money around the world.

How do you fancy owning two Bugatti Veyrons, the fastest and priciest street car in the world, with a top speed of 250mph and a cost of €1m a pop? Or how about splashing out €18m on art formally owned by French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent? How about affording all of this on your monthly salary of €3,200? These are just some of the luxuries enjoyed by Teodorin Obiang, eldest son of the autocratic president of Equatorial Guinea, in his position as the country’s agriculture and forestry minister, which were seized by French authorities in February on suspicions...

Following traces of money flowing through the criminal underworld has long been an important strategy for law enforcement. German investigators were trying to do just that, following US$150 million in corrupt money back from Germany to a number of Russian officials. However, the investigators were forced to give up their search after the trail brought them to an anonymous corporation, and uncooperative Russian officials.