Just back from an interesting tax and transparency briefing with Gavin Hayman from Global Witness and Adrian Lovett from One
Gavin talked about how anonymous 'shell' companies' actions can have a huge negative impact on developing countries.
One example he gave was how the Democratic Republic of Congo, just before recent elections, sold off five of its best copper and cobalt mines. They were sold to anonymous companies registered in the British Virgin Islands for up to 1/20th of their estimated market value. The BVI companies then re-sold the rights to the mines for a huge profit.
The suggestion being that corrupt DRC leaders were lining their pockets before they lost power in the upcoming election.
The losses to the DRC from this particular deal are estimated to be $1.3 billion - twice the DRC health and education budget.
Gavin quoted Paul Collier as saying that shell companies are 'getaway cars for global corruption.'
So how does this link back to the IF Campaign?
Well, the IF Campaign are calling on tax havens like the BVI to commit to putting beneficial ownership information (i.e. who is the actual human being who controls/benefits from a company) in the public domain.
Having this information freely available would make it much easier for citizens, journalists and civil society to hold companies (and their owners) to account for their actions; and much harder for corrupt individuals to hide behind phantom companies.
Now I'm no expert on transparency, but it makes sense to me that making this sort of information more widely available can only be a good thing.
The question is, will the G8 lead by example and commit to a move towards PUBLIC registers of beneficial ownership?